Amazon will invest  $230 million into generative AI startups worldwide

Amazon announced a commitment to invest $230 million (€214.87 million) to accelerate the creation of generative AI applications in startups worldwide. This investment will provide startups, especially early-stage companies, with AWS credits, mentorship, and education to foster using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies.

Part of this new commitment will fund the second cohort of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, which offers hands-on experience and up to $1 million (€934,300) in credits to each of the top 80 early-stage startups using generative AI to solve complex challenges. The AWS Generative AI Accelerator applications are open from June 13 through July 19.

AI startups 

Matt Wood, vice president of artificial intelligence products at AWS, highlighted AWS's long history of helping startups build, launch and scale their businesses. Wood states, "It's no coincidence that 96% of all AI/ML unicorns operate on AWS. With this new initiative, we will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses by providing the resources needed to develop new AI applications that will transform how the world learns, connects, and conducts business."

AWS credits can be used to access AWS computing, storage, database technologies, and energy-efficient AI chips such as AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia2. These credits can also be used on Amazon SageMaker. This fully managed service helps companies build and train their own models and access models and tools to create generative AI applications easily and securely through Amazon Bedrock.

The AWS Generative AI Accelerator Program

The AWS Generative AI Accelerator selects top emerging startups using generative AI to solve complex problems in industries such as financial services, health and life sciences, media and entertainment, business, and climate change. Participants will have access to sessions on ML performance optimization, technology infrastructure improvement, and go-to-market strategies. The 10-week program will pair participants with business and technical mentors based on their industry sector.