AWS commits $230m to AI start-ups to drive genAI innovation: Here's why

'With this new effort, we will help start-ups 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 $230m into AI start-ups that are seeking to take generative AI applications to the next level.

The $100bn cloud giant is offering AWS credits as well as access to its infrastructure and AI chips to start-ups, particularly early-stage companies that want to create the next wave of genAI applications.

"With this new effort, we will help start-ups 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.

Why give start-ups $230m?

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

Start-ups 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 start-ups to build, launch, and scale their business than any other cloud provider—it's no coincidence that 96 per cent 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 $1m in credits to each of the top 80 early-stage start-ups that are using generative AI to solve complex challenges.

The genAI program identifies top early-stage start-ups 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 start-ups with business and technical mentors based on industry vertical.

Startups will receive up to $1m 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 start-ups.

AWS is rapidly expanding globally

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

During the first quarter of 2024, AWS generated a record $25bn in revenue, representing an increase of 17 per cent 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 datacentre 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.