This little-known NVIDIA program supports 4,500 European startups.

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In 2018, Stijn Verrept realised that to develop a high-quality smart lamp that could detect movements and notify caregivers when an elderly person falls, he needed to find a non-traditional solution.

Belept, founder of Belgian startup Nobi, has tried unsuccessfully to place cameras on ceilings and on the lamps themselves and manually calculate the distance a person could fall. The technology is meant to help seniors stay in their homes.

The company decided to pivot to artificial intelligence (AI), choosing NVIDIA microchips for their high processing power and ability to quickly retrain lamps.

By 2020, Nobi and its smart lamps will join NVIDIA’s Inception program, “to help startups rapidly evolve through cutting-edge technology,” the company said in a statement. Website.

Nobi used $100,000 (€92,000) in NVIDIA credits to store the AI ​​training in its cloud, where the data is still stored today.

“It’s been extremely helpful because all the money we don’t have to spend on cloud costs can be put into development, and every tech startup is development-focused,” Verrept told Euronews Next.

Nobi is one of 4,500 European companies and more than 17,000 worldwide supported by the program, according to an NVIDIA spokesperson.

Through Inception, NVIDIA will give select AI startups on the continent a head start with “preferential pricing” on graphics cards, courses and exclusive events, according to the company’s website.

It’s one of three investment arms the world’s second-most profitable company is leveraging to build what it calls the global AI ecosystem.

NVIDIA “Provides Building Blocks” for AI Startups

Velepto estimates that the program gave his company, Novi, about an 18-month head start on building a prototype.

Moon Surgical, a French-American medical technology startup, is using NVIDIA technology with help from Inception to build a surgical robotic system that gives surgeons precision and control during minimally invasive procedures.

Moon Surgical’s chief operating officer, Jeffrey Alvarez, said the company has been given three to six months to “improve our algorithms and make our hardware more reliable.”

Startups that sign up with NVIDIA can access training credits for programming courses and preferential pricing on the company’s products.

By 2023, two years after Moon Surgical joined Inception, NVIDIA became a formal investor in Moon Surgical, providing the company with $55 million (€51.19 million) in funding. round.

Mohamed (Sid) Siddeek, head of NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, Nventures, currently serves as an observer on the company’s board of directors.

Serge Paralic, Nvidia’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, previously told Euronews Next that the Inception program is part of the company’s broader “ecosystem” that works with “all AI companies.”

“We are building a complete ecosystem to accommodate and support companies that want to make the transition. [generative] “It’s AI,” Paralick said.

Paralick added that the goal of the program is to “provide the building blocks” for AI companies so they can develop their own devices, but “we’re not building applications for them.”

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In addition to the UK’s Synthesia, Nvidia has also made separate investments in France’s Mistral AI and Hugging Face.

Are NVIDIA’s investments in these startups anti-competitive?

Anne-Christine Witt, a professor of antitrust law at Lille’s EDHEC business school, said antitrust lawyers would need to prove three things before they could bring a case against NVIDIA or any startup program backed by big tech companies.

This can include showing evidence of having a large market share and abusing that share to thwart competition, or abusing one’s advantage to buy up smaller businesses.

“It would be very difficult to say that. [the Inception programme promotes] “As long as startups are free to switch to other technologies, anti-competitive behavior will not be tolerated,” DeWitt said.

According to media estimates, NVIDIA’s market share is between 70% and 95%. ReportsBut DeWitt said having a large market share isn’t illegal.

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There are no conditions that keep Novi tied to Nvidia products or the Inception program, according to founder Steen Velept: If a cheaper, more efficient model comes along, Novi can switch to it, he said.

DeWitt explained that a lack of transparency among tech companies makes it difficult for antitrust experts to know whether there are merger control violations or other factors.

“This is not information that is in the contracts that can be provided to the competition authorities,” DeWitt continued. “A lot of it is in a black box, it’s all kept strictly confidential.”

The European Commission is drafting the Digital Markets Act, a new law that could help it investigate antitrust violations by artificial intelligence companies on a “case-by-case basis,” a spokesperson told Euronews Next.

The European Commission declined to comment specifically on Nvidia, which is reportedly facing possible antitrust violations in France, but said it was “investigating several agreements between large digital market players and generative AI developers and providers” and how that is affecting market dynamics.

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