Amazon Web Services (AWS) will offer its free credit programme for start-ups, one of the top official of the company said in an interview, news platform Reuters reported. These free credits will facilitate startups to cover the cost of using major AI models.
Under the credit scheme the US-based company will allow start-ups to use its cloud credits to cover the use of its models from its competitors in the AI ecosystem. AWS competes with Anthropic, Meta, Mistral AI, and Cohere.
While discussing it during the interview, Howard Wright, vice president and global head of start-ups at AWS, said, "This is another gift that we're giving back to the startup ecosystem, in exchange for what we hope is startups continuing to choose AWS as their first stop."
The move is seen as Amazon's effort to capture a major portion of the AI market worldwide, as the company aggressively invests in the development of cloud and AI technologies. It recently invested $4 billion in Anthropic. Anthropic will use AWS as its primary cloud provider, as well as Trainium and Inferentia chips to build and train its models following the investment deal.
Wright further added that the free credits will enhance the revenue figure of Anthropic, which is one of the popular models on Bedrock.
According to Wright, the company is offering these credits to build an ecosystem. The company has previously offered credits worth $6 billion to start-ups in the past decade.
Apart from Amazon, Microsoft Azure has also been providing free credits to AI startups. Microsoft Azure provides credits applicable to OpenAI's models, and Google Cloud offers credits for over 130 models on Vertex AI.
