Meta is teaming up with Amazon Web Services, on an initiative designed to get third-party developers to build new applications based on their technology.
The program will provide six months of technical support from both companies’ engineers and $200,000 in AWS cloud computing credits each to 30 US startups looking to build AI tools on Meta’s Llama AI model. The partnership is set to be unveiled at AWS Summit in New York City on Wednesday.
For Meta, the project could be a boost at a time when CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pouring enormous resources into his ambition to become a top player in the AI space. The company last month announced the creation of a new AI super intelligence team, after recruiting leading researchers away from competitors with massive pay packages. Meta also invested $14.3 billion into AI startup Scale, which included the hiring of its founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, and several other top employees.
And Amazon’s investment, worth more than $6 million in total, could pay off if the startups continue using AWS’s service to access the AI system after the six months. While Amazon has its own large language models, AWS’s AI strategy has been to help companies access any model — or multiple — along with the intense computing power needed to run them.
Early-stage startups can apply to the program and will be selected later this summer based on the “potential impact of the proposed solutions and the technical ability” of their teams, AWS and Meta said in a statement.
“We have a long-standing relationship and partnership with Meta, and what we’re aiming to do here with the Llama collaboration is really empower founders to build transformative AI using Llama models”, AWS Vice President and Global Head of Startups and Venture Capital Jon Jones told CNN exclusively ahead of the announcement.
He added that AWS customers are already using Llama to, for example, create AI customer relationship management tools for auto dealerships or financial technology tools.
Source: CNN
Image Credit: Meta & AWS
