American chip company Nvidia wants to focus more on supporting tech startups in the Czech Republic. There, she began promoting the Inception program, under which start-ups offer technology for free or tap into investors. The company also invests in startups.

Startup efforts are helping Nvidia build an ecosystem of partner firms using its chips especially for artificial intelligence processing. The company is currently benefiting greatly from the AI boom kicked off by the advent of OpenAI and ChatGPT. Its shares have risen 218 per cent over the past year, sales are up 206 per cent year-on-year in the latest quarter (to $18 billion) and the firm's market value has reached $1.5 trillion.

Inception is a program in which startups can join free of charge and receive up to a hundred thousand dollars in credit for the use of AI chips in the Amazon Web Services cloud, help with PR and marketing, technical advice from Nvidia experts, discounts on hardware or involvement in the sales and distribution network of one of the largest chip companies in the world.

“The program helps startups innovate and grow. For example, our team of developers can help them streamline their source code,” said Aleks Polak from Nvidia's Warsaw headquarters.

The Brno company RCE systems with DataFromSky technology has already joined Inception. It uses artificial intelligence applied to camera recordings, for example, to monitor traffic in real time. Its customers include Toyota, VW, Siemens or Bosch.

“As part of the Inception program, among other things, we drew a discount on a server with AI chips for learning neural networks,” DataFromSky director David Herman told e15. The Czech project has also become part of the Nvidia Metropolis offering, a suite of AI applications with which it is possible to manage logistics, warehouses, manufacturing or smart cities.

The American Colossus in the Czech Republic also offers other programs for universities or research institutions. “For the education sector, these are discounts of up to 80 percent,” said Kamila Jeřábková from M Computers, which represents Nvidia in our region.

Nvidia's startup program also offers access to VC Alliance venture capital investors. Heavyweights like Mayfield, Pitango or In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment offshoot, are among them.

Some of the investments are being made by Nvidia itself through nVentures. Dealroom calculated that Nvidia invested in 35 AI firms last year, six times more than year on year: “This makes Nvidia the most active investor in AI companies, bigger than Andreessen Horowitz or Sequoia funds.” Nvidia also holds positions in major OpenAI and ChatGPT competitors like Cohere, Inflection AI and Mistral.

The Czech Republic is one of the most attractive regions for Nvidia. The organization Prg.ai, which brings together Prague companies and institutions dealing with AI, calculated that there are around 140 industry companies and startups in the capital alone. According to Brno.ai alone, there are more than a hundred of them in Brno. “A third of Prague AI companies make over 90 percent of their sales abroad,” Lukáš Kačena, director of Prg.ai, indicated the export potential.

Nvidia representatives also praised the recently announced program of the European Commission to promote the development of AI. This includes, among other things, the access of startups to European supercomputers (often using Nvidia chips) or financial support from European programs. The Commission also envisages private investment of around €4 billion by 2027.

“There are definitely a lot of things going on around AI in Europe, especially around research. France invests the most. In the Czech Republic, you just have to look at the number of organizations involved in Prg.ai,” summed up Arts Yang, product architect at Nvidia.

Source: Jan Sedlák, E15.cz

https://www.e15.cz/byznys/nvidia-v-ramci-exploze-ai-lovi-v-cesku-startupy-nabizi-jim-slevy-investice-ci-podporu-prodeje-1413243

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