Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a $230 million (£180m) commitment for startups around the world to accelerate the creation of generative AI applications.

This will provide startups, especially early-stage companies, with AWS credits, mentorship, and education to further their use of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

Part of the new commitment will fund the second cohort of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a programme that provides 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.

“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% of all AI/ML unicorns run on AWS,” said Matt Wood, vice president, artificial intelligence products at AWS.

He added: “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.”

What do participating startups get?

The AWS Generative AI Accelerator identifies top early-stage startups that are using generative AI to solve complex challenges in areas such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, business, and climate change, among others.

Participants will access sessions on ML performance enhancement, stack optimisation, and go-to-market strategies. The 10-week program will match participants with both 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 have access to industry experts, technology, and technical sessions from NVIDIA, the programme’s presenting partner, and be invited to join the NVIDIA Inception program, designed to nurture promising startups.

AWS will announce selected startups for the second cohort on September 10, and the program will kick off on October 1 with in-person sessions at Amazon’s Seattle campus. All 80 participating startups will be invited to attend and showcase their solutions to potential investors, customers, partners, and AWS leaders in December at re:Invent 2024 in Las Vegas.

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“AWS has been instrumental in enabling us to scale our generative AI platform to meet the rapidly growing demand from our global user community. Their robust generative AI infrastructure helped us reduce inferencing costs by 60% and accelerate our language model inference speeds by up to 35%,” said Jachin Bhasme, co-founder and COO of Leonardo.AI, one of the 21 startups to participate in the first cohort of the program.

He added: “The accelerator was also an incredible experience for us. The business and technical mentorship we received and the connections we made played a crucial role in shaping our product and strategy.”