OpenAI is giving roughly 10 AI startups $1 million each and early access to their systems • TechCrunch

OpenAI, the San Francisco-based company behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early stage AI startups with capital and OpenAI technology and resources.

The group, called Converge, will be funded by the OpenAI Startup Fund, OpenAI said. The $100 million sale of Entrepreneurship was announced last May and is backed by Microsoft and other partners. The 10 or more founders selected for Converge will receive $1 million each and five weeks of office hours, workshops and events with OpenAI staff, as well as early access to OpenAI models and a “program dedicated to AI companies.”

“We’re excited to have teams at all seed levels, from idea-only founders to co-founding teams working on a single product,” he wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch ahead of today’s announcement. “Engineers, designers, researchers and product developers… from all backgrounds, disciplines and experience levels are encouraged to apply, and experience working with AI systems is not required.

The application deadline is November 25, but OpenAI has announced that it will continue to review applications for future cohorts after that date.

When OpenAI first announced the OpenAI Startup Fund, it said the fund’s recipients would get access to Azure resources from Microsoft. It is not clear whether the same benefit will be provided to Converge participants; We asked OpenAI to clarify. We’ve also asked OpenAI to disclose the full terms of Converge, including the equity agreement, and we’ll update this section once we hear back.

Beyond Converge, surprisingly, there aren’t many incubator programs focused solely on AI startups. The Allen Institute launched a small accelerator in 2017 that offers up to $500,000 in pre-seed investment and up to $450,000 in cloud computing credits. Google Brain founder Andrew Ng will lead the $175 million AI Fund to launch new AI-based businesses and companies. And Nat Friedman (ex-GitHub) and Daniel Gross (ex-Apple) will fund the AI ​​Grant, which provides up to $250,000 for “AI-native” product startups and $250,000 in cloud credits from Azure.

With Converge, OpenAI is no doubt looking to cash in on the increasingly lucrative industry that is AI. According to The Information, OpenAI — which is itself in talks to raise $20 billion in funding from Microsoft — has agreed to lead financing for Descript, an AI-powered audio and video editing app valued at $550 million. AI startup Cohere is reportedly negotiating a $200 million round led by Google.Stable AI, which supports the development of generative AI systems, recently raised $101 million, including Stable Diffusion.

Given the high costs (staff, computing, etc.) of developing state-of-the-art AI systems, the size of the largest AI startup funding rounds does not necessarily correlate with revenue. (Stable Diffusion alone cost $600,000, according to Stability AI.) But investors’ continued willingness to cut these startups huge checks — see Inflection AI’s $225 million in revenue, Anthropic’s $580 million in new funding, and more — suggests they have faith. Final return on investment.