Amazon says that it commit as much as $230 million for startups developing generative AI-powered applications.
The investment, of which around $80 million will go to Amazon's second AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, is meant to position AWS as a gorgeous cloud infrastructure for startups developing generative AI models for his or her products, apps and services. Much of the brand new tranche – including the whole portion earmarked for the accelerator program – will are available in the shape of compute credits for AWS infrastructure, meaning it can’t be transferred to other cloud service providers reminiscent of Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
To make the offer much more attractive, Amazon guarantees that startups on this yr's Generative AI Accelerator program may have access to experts and technology from Nvidia, this system's essential partner, and might be invited to take part in the Nvidia Inception program, which offers firms the chance to network with potential investors and extra consulting resources.
The Generative AI Accelerator program has also grown significantly. Last yr's group – ten startups – only received as much as $300,000 in AWS compute credits, for a complete investment of around $3 million.
“With this latest initiative, we are going to help startups construct and scale world-class firms by giving them the constructing blocks they should develop latest AI applications that can impact every facet of how the world learns, connects, and does business,” said Matt Wood, vice chairman of AI products at AWS, in a press release.
Amazon’s increasing spending on generative AI technology, which incorporates projects reminiscent of the $100 million AWS Generative AI Innovation Center and the Project Olympus generative model, comes as the corporate tries to meet up with the tech giants within the burgeoning – and increasingly competitive – field of generative AI. While Amazon claims that its various generative AI businesses have reached “multiple billions” in revenue, it’s widely believed that the corporate has missed the boat on generative AI.
After According to a report by The Information, AWS originally planned to introduce its own generative AI model much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, codenamed Bedrock, which eventually became Amazon’s Bedrock Model hosting service – at its annual conference in November 2022. But serious errors forced the organization to postpone the launch.
Sharon Goldman from Fortune this week reported that Amazon's Alexa division can also be facing challenges resulting from technical setbacks and political infighting. Nine months after a spectacular press preview of a “next-gen” Alexa, covered by our intrepid hardware reporter Brian Heater, the brand new Alexa is reportedly still removed from ready for production – resulting from insufficient training data, inadequate access to training hardware, and other obstacles.
Amazon also missed the chance to back two leading AI startups, Cohere and Anthropic. It later tried to take a position in Cohere but was rejected – and needed to accept a (but large, totaling $4 billion) co-investment in Anthropic with its essential competitor, Google.
