COMPANY NEWS: In June, AWS Generative AI Spotlight program in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), a four-week accelerator program to nurture pre-seed and seed-stage ready startups in the region who are building generative AI applications.
Originally, the program in APJ planned to select up to 120 pre-seed and seed-stage ready startups across the region, including 25 from Australia and New Zealand, but it just finished, and we can now share that the ANZ cohort was oversubscribed with 46 local startups accepted into the program (with more than a third having a woman as the co-founder or technical lead). This is a significant win for Aussie and Kiwi start-ups on a regional level!
The program helped selected Aussie and Kiwi startups to accelerate their understanding of and fluency with generative AI tools and services from AWS, by providing them access to business and technical knowledge and expertise from industry experts, founders, and investors, and as well as peer support from a community of innovators of fellow cohort members from across the region. The cohort participants also had access to the AWS startup flagship AWS Activate program and receive up to US$100,000 in AWS Cre
Kate O'Keeffe, co-founder and CEO at Heatseeker, an AI platform that helps companies grow through live market experiments, said: “AI is evolving rapidly so it’s great AWS is uplifting the local sector with what we need to create globally successful generative AI-enabled businesses. Throughout the six weeks of the program, the AWS team curated dozens of local VCs that we pitched to and we even met some investors we hadn’t engaged with previously.”
Alain Richardt, founder and CEO of Atomic Tessellator, a chemistry and material science platform powered by AI, said: “The AWS Gen AI spotlight was very valuable for us - the sheer depth of support that AWS can offer both technical and business was impressive. Through this program we got exposure to top tier investors who have already taken decisive action and fuelled our progress”
Will Ashford, founder and CEO of TrueState, an end-to-end machine learning development platform that leverages GenAI to accelerate delivery, said: “I found the AWS GenAI Spotlight program incredibly useful for understanding AWS's AI offerings and how they can support growing companies like TrueState. The added bonus was the chance to connect with investors from Australia and beyond, making it a worthwhile experience for us.”
The AWS Generative AI Spotlight program in APJ is in collaboration with venture capital firms and organizations in Australia including Stone & Chalk and Build Club.
John Kearney, Head of Startups, Amazon Web Services Australia and New Zealand, said: “We’ve had an overwhelming amount of interest in our local Generative AI Spotlight program and have had to nearly double our participant number from 25 to 46, underscoring the exponential growth and momentum in the generative AI startup space in Australia and New Zealand. During the four-week program, we were introduced to some really amazing founders with big ideas, and helped them accelerate their understanding of generative AI services from AWS, as well as provided them access to business and technical expertise from industry experts. Many founders were also appreciative to understand how they can work more closely with AWS on their go-to-market approach, creating pathways to support future growth and scale. A big shoutout to our program partners, Stone & Chalk and Build Club, who were critical to the success of the Spotlight program. For over 18 years, AWS has empowered more startups to build, launch, and scale their businesses than any other cloud provider. It's no coincidence that 96% of AI/ML unicorns run on AWS. It’s still early days and we remain committed to nurturing the next wave of startup innovation in generative AI locally and around the world.”