Washington: Microsoft announced that it will provide distinguished startups Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub with free access to supercomputing resources from the Azure cloud to develop artificial intelligence (AI) models.
Accordingly, Microsoft has updated its startup program to include a no-cost Azure AI infrastructure option for Nvidia-based GPU virtual machine clusters to train and run generative models, including large language models along the lines of ChatGPT.
The company said in a statement that they are working closely with Y Combinator to prioritize the asks from their current cohort, and then alumni, as part of the initial preview.
The focus will be on tasks like training and fine-tuning use cases that unblock innovation, Samsung said.
It added that they believe that Azure is the best system for building AI solutions, and they are prioritizing those that are building on Azure.
Samsung indicated that this offer is for Azure-based startups, part of our vision to make Microsoft the best cloud for building AI solutions.
Over time, Microsoft plans to partner with additional startup accelerators with the aim of lowering the barrier to training and running AI models for any promising startup. Microsoft's approach is to meet the broad needs of the startup community by allowing it in the early stages to use credits to train and fine-tune AI models.
This is not the first time Microsoft has attempted to gain the support with Y Combinator (YC) startups. In 2015, the company said it would give $500,000 in Azure credits to YC startups, a move that at the time was perceived as an effort to draw these startups away from rival clouds, and Microsoft does not deny that the virtual machine clusters for GPU clusters for AI training and inferencing are along the same self-serving vein.
