Two Vietnam startups selected for AWS Generative AI Accelerator

The announcement was made during the second edition of AWS Cloud Day Vietnam 2024 in Hanoi, which attracted hundreds of participants, including policymakers, international organisations, experts, and members of the business community.

The two homegrown early-stage startups are among 80 selected globally by AWS for their innovative use of AI and their ambition for global growth.

“AI Hay is thrilled to have been accepted into the AWS GenAI Accelerator. Being part of this programme is a major milestone for us,” said Duc Tran, CEO of AI Hay. “The scheme will enable us to accelerate our AI development and scale our solutions to new heights. We look forward to collaborating with industry experts and fellow innovators on this transformative journey.”

AWS Cloud Day in Hanoi September 18

AI Hay aims to develop a Large Language Model (LLM)-powered Knowledge Discovery Platform designed for speakers of low-to-medium resource languages, providing access to collective intelligence through the integration of search, social, and AI technologies.

Kompato AI offers consumer lending institutions a full-stack AI platform for Account Receivable Management, delivering robust compliance, scalability, and efficiency.

“The AWS Generative AI Accelerator will help Kompato AI efficiently scale our solution across Asia and America,” said Dr. Nguyen An Nguyen, CEO of Kompato AI.

“We are heartened to be part of the programme and look forward to showcasing how GenAI can drive innovation in our industry. We are excited to collaborate with fellow builders and industry experts.”

The startups will receive AWS credits, mentorship, and education to accelerate AI innovation with AWS and will be invited to showcase their solutions at AWS’s premier annual event, in Las Vegas later this year.

As part of AWS’s $230 million commitment to accelerate the creation of AI applications worldwide, the AWS Generative AI Accelerator programme provides early-stage startups with AWS credits, mentorship, and education to enhance their use of AI and machine learning technologies. Participants gain access to AWS compute, storage, and database technologies, as well as AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia2, energy-efficient AI chips that offer high performance at a lower cost. The credits can also be used on Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that helps companies build and train their own foundation models, as well as access models and tools to develop GenAI applications through Amazon Bedrock.

The 10-week programme, which starts on September 30, will match participants with both business and technical mentors based on their industry. Selected startups will receive up to $1 million each in AWS credits to help them build, train, test, and launch their GenAI solutions. Participants will also have access to technical sessions from programme partner NVIDIA, a pioneer in accelerated computing.

“Startups are the lifeblood of innovation. Our $230 million commitment and the global expansion of the GenAI Accelerator reflect our ongoing dedication to supporting them in developing groundbreaking solutions with GenAI,” said Priya Lakshmi, head of Startups ASEAN, AWS.

“Startups like AI Hay are at the forefront of this transformative wave, pushing the boundaries of AI and bringing exciting new solutions to market. We are incredibly proud of how these pioneers are transforming industries and improving the way we work.”

According to PitchBook Data, Inc., 765 AI and ML companies in Vietnam have raised over $47.3 million in investment so far in 2024. However, only 35 per cent of GenAI companies globally have offices outside their home countries, highlighting the need for more support to help local businesses expand internationally.

“Asia-Pacific-based GenAI companies have raised over $2.5 billion in 2024, more than the combined total of the previous three years,” said Brendan Burke, senior analyst of Emerging Technology Research at PitchBook.

“Developers and startups are seizing the opportunity to train custom models based on unique cultural and linguistic data. Leading AI researchers are also working on diverse transformer models across multimodal domains, including 3D images, interactive media, and synthetic voice. The future of AI applications will rely on specialised model architectures, and startups will need world-class cloud infrastructure to fulfil their vision.”

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