AWS Commits $230M To AI Startups To Drive GenAI Innovation: Here’s Why

'With this new effort, we will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses, providing the building blocks they need to unleash new AI applications that will impact all facets of how the world learns, connects, and does business,’ says AWS’ Matt Wood.

Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, is investing $230 million into AI startups that are seeking to take generative AI applications to the next level.

The $100 billion Seattle-based cloud giant is offering AWS credits as well as access to its infrastructure and AI chips to startups, particularly early-stage companies that want to create the next wave of GenAI applications.

“With this new effort, we will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses, providing the building blocks they need to unleash new AI applications that will impact all facets of how the world learns, connects, and does business,” said Matt Wood, vice president of artificial intelligence products at AWS, in a blog post today.

Why Give Startups $230 Million?

AWS is seeking to have the world’s most innovative generative AI startups use AWS infrastructure and services, while at the same time skilling up their employees on AWS certifications and competencies.

Startups can use AWS credits to access AWS compute, storage, and database technologies, as well as AWS’ AI-designed Trainium and Inferentia2 chips.

These credits can also be used on Amazon SageMaker to help companies build and train their own AI foundational models, as well as to access models and tools to easily and securely build generative AI applications through Amazon Bedrock.

“For more than 18 years, AWS has helped more startups to build, launch, and scale their business than any other cloud provider—it’s no coincidence that 96 percent of all AI/ML unicorns run on AWS,” said Wood.

The AWS Generative AI Accelerator Program

Part of the new commitment will fund the second cohort of AWS’ Generative AI Accelerator, a program that provides hands-on expertise and up to $1 million in credits to each of the top 80 early-stage startups that are using generative AI to solve complex challenges.

The GenAI program identifies top early-stage startups that are using generative AI to solve challenges in areas such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, business, and climate change. The 10-week program matches startups with business and technical mentors based on industry vertical.

Startups will receive up to $1 million each in AWS credits to help them build, train, test, and launch their generative AI solutions. They will also be invited to join the Nvidia Inception program designed to foster cutting-edge startups.

AWS Is Rapidly Expanding Globally

AWS is the world leader in cloud computing, owning 31 percent share of the global cloud services market, followed by Microsoft at 25 percent share, then Google at 11 percent share.

During the first quarter of 2024, AWS generated a record $25 billion in revenue, representing an increase of 17 percent year over year.

The cloud giant has been pouring millions into its own generative AI offerings—from Amazon Bedrock to its new AI assistant Amazon Q. AWS now offerings more than 240 services around AI, compute, storage, databases, networking, machine learning, security, IoT, application development and more.

AWS currently has 105 Availability Zones consisting of data center campuses that power its AI and cloud solutions.

AWS is set to add another 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.