Amazon will provide recent AI startups that have partnered with Y Combinator with $500,000 each in credits on Amazon Bedrock that can be used on third-party models such as Anthropic and Mistral AI.
Typically, AWS hands out $100,000 in free credits to startups that partner with Activate Providers, but the latest round of Y Combinator-funded startups is giving away five times that amount. For comparison, Microsoft offers up to $150,000 in credits for Azure, and Google specifically offers $350,000 for AI startups and $200,000 for startups that don’t work with AI.
“We partner with venture capital firms and startup organizations like Y Combinator around the world, and these strategic partners receive specific packages tailored to the needs of their portfolio companies,” Amazon said. the person in charge said. register. This opens up the possibility for Amazon to offer even more credits to future startups.
AWS says it has provided more than $125 million in free credits to Y Combinator companies over the past three years. However, his total AWS benefits budget for the past 10 years is $6 billion.
AWS credits (including $500,000 set aside for Y Combinator companies) can now also be used on third-party AI models hosted by Amazon Bedrock. One of the most notable companies is Anthropic, which just recently received an injection of his $4 billion from Amazon itself. These free credits will not only ease the burden on cash-strapped startups, but will also increase Anthropic’s cash flow beyond what Amazon is already giving it.
These AWS credits can also be used for models in Meta (maintaining LLaMA), Mistral AI, Stability AI, Cohere, and AI21 Labs.
Previously, AWS credits could not be used to redeem time using third-party AI models, and startups were instead billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Not only did this limit his use of AWS credits, whether it was $100,000 or $500,000, but it also wasn’t ideal for someone who wanted to try other models.
“We hope this will allow startups to experiment with these models in the same way they use AWS Activate credits to experiment with other AWS services, with little or no upfront cost. ,” Amazon said.
Who doesn’t like free credits? The FTC probably
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and startups probably like the idea of offering hundreds of thousands of dollars for runtime for AI workloads, but the FTC and similar watchdog agencies may disagree. The FTC has been investigating three big tech companies, along with Anthropic and OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), since January over concerns that these types of practices could be anticompetitive. The European Commission has similarly launched investigations into Microsoft and OpenAI.
This is not a legal investigation (yet), just an “investigation,” in the words of current FTC Chair Lina Khan. Kahn wrote an article titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” published in the Yale Law Journal in 2017, in which he argued that Amazon’s business model ignores current antitrust laws. It’s likely that you’re a little skeptical of Amazon’s credit system, given that it claims to have been able to do so.
On the other hand, it may reflect well on Amazon that it collaborates with many third parties on AI models that are not exclusive to AWS. On the other hand, handing out so many free credits is probably going to be a big problem for the FTC no matter what.
Additionally, Amazon has already been hit with an FTC lawsuit over its e-commerce business, making it clear that the consumer watchdog isn’t actually a big fan of Amazon. ®
