October 22, 2024 – In a major development, technology giants Microsoft and NVIDIA have announced a collaboration to bolster artificial intelligence (AI) startups in the health and life sciences sectors with a plethora of resources.
Microsoft has unveiled its “Microsoft for Startups” initiative, offering eligible startups a generous Azure credit of up to 150,000overfouryears.TheseenterpriseswillgainaccesstoavarietyofAIlargelanguagemodels,includingAzureOpenAIService,Meta’sLlama,andPhi.Additionally,theywillreceiveproductivityservicesworthupto200,000, including Microsoft 365, Visual Studio, and GitHub. Furthermore, startups will benefit from complimentary technical support and prioritized access to the Pegasus program, which provides access to Microsoft’s sales team.
On the other hand, NVIDIA has introduced the “Inception” program, providing AI health startups with 10,000 ai.nvidia.com inference credits. This allows them to run GPU-optimized AI models through NVIDIA-managed serverless APIs. The program also includes preferential pricing for NVIDIA AI Enterprise, which encompasses the comprehensive suite of the NVIDIA Clara platform for healthcare and life science computing. Startups will have the opportunity for early access to new NVIDIA healthcare products and can connect with investors through the Inception VC Alliance.
Both companies have indicated that they may expand these support programs to include businesses and technologies from other sectors, further promoting the widespread application of AI technology.