AWS launches global generative AI accelerator for startups

Building on the exciting new developments around generative AI, we are happy to launch the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a 10-week program designed to take the most promising generative AI startups around the globe to the next level.

Generative AI is an incredibly exciting field that has the potential to revolutionize many industries. Tech startups will play an important role in bringing this technology into the mainstream. Take the film industry, for example. The visual effects that make heart-pumping action scenes, amazing super heroes, and enthralling new worlds take months of tedious work by hundreds of artists to come to fruition—adding up numerous hours in post-production time and using millions of dollars in production budget. Because visual effects are so expensive and time-consuming, films with more modest resources struggle to implement high-quality visual effects to bring forth their vision.

Runway, one of our startup customers, is helping artists revolutionize filmmaking with their AI Magic Tools—some of which have been used in the award-winning hit “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.” Their text-guided generative diffusion models are unlocking powerful new multi-modal creation and editing solutions for artists. With Runway, the difficult tasks of composition, stylization, inpainting, motion tracking, and other processes are made easier and quicker for creators, allowing them to focus on more idea concepts and to deliver faster iterations. These tools also cut down production costs and lower the barrier for filmmakers—professionals and amateurs alike—to push the boundaries of movie making and let their imagination run free.

In addition to its creative potential, generative AI has numerous practical applications. It can be used in healthcare to create personalized treatment plans or to better analyze medical images; in finance, it can generate smarter analysis and draw insights; in tech, it can write code and reduce human-error bugs; in manufacturing, it can design new products and optimize production processes.

Here at AWS, we believe the startup community will be the driving force moving these innovations forward. The AWS Generative AI Accelerator is designed to act as catalyst, helping some of the most promising companies in this space to take their ideas off the ground. With a program tailored to meet the needs of generative AI startups, the AWS Generative AI Accelerator will provide access to impactful AI models and tools, customized go-to-market strategies, machine learning stack optimization, and more. Selected startups will also have access to networking opportunities with industry luminaries, potential investors, and customers. In addition, the selected startups will receive up to $300,000 in AWS credits to build their products and services on our tech stack, as well as dedicated business and technical mentors matched based on industry vertical, market, and stage.

To fully benefit from the program, startups should have a minimal viable product (MVP) already developed, some traction with customers, and be working to enhance their product value proposition in order to scale. Although the program is open to all startups, those already building on AWS will receive the most benefit from the accelerator’s dedicated AWS Solutions Architect team, who will support every step of their product development. The program is open to companies around the globe, with no limitations around use case—we want to empower companies applying generative AI to solutions from legal and marketing, to software engineering, green energy, and life sciences, including drug discovery.

Here’s what some of our investor partners are saying about the program:

“AWS Accelerator offers a compelling program for founders building in the Generative AI space, and I look forward to meeting the cohort when they’re announced,” said Sonya Huang, Partner at Sequoia Capital.

“With so much activity and opportunity today in the world of AI-driven startups, it is a great time for AWS to launch this Generative AI Accelerator. I am looking forward to seeing which companies are selected for the program and how AWS will partner with them to turbocharge their growth,” said Rob Toews, Partner at Radical Ventures.

We are excited to meet the founders who are applying generative AI to solve some of our society’s most riveting challenges.

Applications for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator will be open today through April 17, 2023. To learn more and apply, please visit AWS Generative AI Accelerator.