Amazon Provides $230 Million in Cloud Credits to AI Startups

Amazon is giving AI startups $230 million in AWS cloud credits to help them grow by giving them free computer power, AI models, and infrastructure.

Amazon announced that it will spend $230 million in artificial intelligence startups through Amazon Web Service (AWS) credits. This is the latest example of a cloud provider trying to get AI clients when the products are still very new.

Early-stage generative AI startups that use the credits will be able to use free computer power, a range of AI models, and infrastructure to build their businesses on AWS.

Amazon says it already gives startups $1 billion in cloud credits every year. This new promise is to help generative AI companies. They’ll be able to quickly make changes and start over if they need to. Matt Wood, vice president of AI Products at AWS, said that once they hit that home run, they’ll be able to double down and get to the scale with safety, responsibility, and regularity.

The company also said that some of the credits will help 80 early-stage companies around the world through the AWS Generative AI Accelerator programme. Each business that gets into the accelerator could get AWS credits worth up to $1 million.

Cloud service providers like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud often give credits to businesses to get them to use their services. This is because as a business uses the cloud more, the costs can add up. As of earlier this year, Amazon also let users use models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral AI, and Cohere. The company did this to try to get more people to use its AI platform.

Cloud services are being used more often because of AI, which has helped cloud companies grow faster. For example, AWS’s sales grew by 17% in the first quarter, to $9.42 billion, which was more than what analysts had expected. Concerns about antitrust have also been raised by the fact that tech giants are investing in AI companies. There are rumours that Howard Wright, who was in charge of startups’ relationships with AWS as the global head of Startups, recently quit. There was no word from an Amazon representative about the move.