Accelerating Startup Growth: How NVIDIA and AWS are Collaborating to Grow AI Startups

Guest contribution by Serge Lemonde, Global AI Startups Program Director at NVIDIA

To help some of today’s hottest AI startups innovate and grow, they’re gaining access to advanced technology, training and support – all at no charge – thanks to a new collaboration between NVIDIA and AWS.

Starting today, members of the companies’ startup programs— called NVIDIA Inception and AWS Activate — are eligible to receive key benefits provided by each program

This collaboration helps us accelerate our long-term commitment to supporting global startup communities. Entrepreneurial founders out there are tackling big problems and we know some of the challenges they face at different stages of their lifecycle. We’ve witnessed the boost entrepreneurs can get when they have access to the right people, skills and technology to help drive change. By extending the reach of our programs, we want to put these resources directly into the hands of our collaborators.

Catering to the needs of startups pushing forward advances in AI and data science,  NVIDIA Inception is a virtual accelerator, which supports an ecosystem of over 3,600 members worldwide. From training opportunities with our deep learning experts, marketing support that includes branding and exposure, as well as direct hardware discounts, our members receive customized benefits to help them during critical stages of prototyping, product development and deployment. Through this collaboration, NVIDIA Inception’s global members can now join AWS Activate and receive business and marketing support, as well as AWS Cloud credits of up to $100,000, which can be used to access NVIDIA’s latest generation GPUs in Amazon EC2 – P2 Instances.

Through AWS Activate, startups have access to the resources they need to quickly get started on AWS – including credits, training and support. AWS provides startups with the low cost, easy to use infrastructure needed to scale and grow. Alumni of AWS Activate can benefit from web-based training, self-paced labs, customer support and third-party offers for cloud-based software to quickly get started on AWS. Alumni of the Activate program with AI and machine learning capabilities can become members of the NVIDIA Inception program, and get immediate access to AI training through our Deep Learning Institute, as well as discounts on NVIDIA GPUs for any on-prem workloads.

This new collaboration makes it easier than ever for NVIDIA Inception and AWS Activate member startups to accelerate their businesses, with immediate access to easy-to-use AWS Cloud. One such example is Tel-Aviv based Voiceitt, the startup behind an innovative solution currently in beta that enables people who have motor, speech and language disorders to easily communicate using their own voice. Voiceitt recognizes a user’s vocal patterns and “speaks” their words in an understandable language, allowing them to communicate clearly and easily with anyone, anywhere, and in any language they choose.

“Our team is grateful for the opportunity afforded by our participation in the NVIDIA Inception program, where we’ve utilized educational resources and networking opportunities to continually improve our core AI-driven speech technology,” says Danny Weissberg, the co-founder and CEO of Voiceitt. “Introductions to potential customers and strategic partners through AWS in Israel have opened doors to leaders and influencers within the community of people with disabilities, including the prominent Shalva National Center in Jerusalem. We’re appreciative of the support from partners like NVIDIA and AWS, as we get closer to realizing our vision: to make the benefits of speech recognition technologies universally accessible.”

“Dedicated startup programs like AWS Activate and NVIDIA Inception make all the difference,” remarks my counterpart Brad Steele, Director of AWS’s Venture Capital business development team, “as they allow us to support and collaborate with founders when they need us the most. For over 13 years, AWS has been supporting founders not just with our technology, but also with a combination of mentoring, technical knowledge and business expertise, and we’re excited to be working with NVIDIA to help startups in their mission to solve complex problems”.

You can learn more about the eligibility requirements of the NVIDIA Inception or AWS Activate programs online. We look forward to having you as part of our shared community.