More recently, NVIDIA achieved a significant milestone – surpassing a $3 trillion market capitalisation, positioning it as the world's second most valuable company. This remarkable feat is largely attributed to its dominant role in the AI sector, where it provides approximately 80% of the semiconductor chips used in generative AI technology.

What does this mean for startups?

NVIDIA's experience and technological advancements present significant opportunities for startups, providing access to cutting-edge technology, accelerating product development, and enhancing AI capabilities. By leveraging NVIDIA's advanced hardware and software solutions, startups can reduce time-to-market, integrate sophisticated AI functionalities, and benefit from a robust support ecosystem. NVIDIA's scalable solutions enable startups to grow operations cost-effectively, while association with such a reputable company can enhance market credibility, attracting investors, customers, and partners

Introducing NVIDIA’s Inception programme

NVIDIA Inception is a free programme designed to help startups evolve faster through access to cutting-edge technology and engineering guidance, as well as opportunities to connect with venture capitalists. With 20,000+ active members worldwide, the programme nurtures technology startups that are changing the world with brilliant, industry-transforming solutions, from developing assistive AI-powered technology for the visually impaired to modelling trees and vegetation to help fire districts across North America build wildfire and climate resilience.

“Our objective is to engage with startups across the ecosystem and support them in driving AI innovations with accelerated computing. We have worked with thousands of startups to help them accelerate innovation and growth,” said Serge Lemonde, NVIDIA’s Inception Partnerships and Ecosystem Development, Senior Director, Worldwide.

The programme is designed for technology startups working in AI, data science, AR/VR, graphics, HPC, and beyond. Essentially, any officially incorporated startup using accelerated computing, regardless of its current funding stage, is eligible and encouraged to apply.

Unlike traditional accelerators, NVIDIA Inception has no application costs, membership fees, or associated equity requirements. Startups are encouraged to apply regardless of their current funding stage. If accepted, members only need to update their profiles every six months to remain eligible for benefits.

By keeping their profiles up to date, NVIDIA can ensure that members receive the right level of support for their journey. For example, early-stage companies usually need developer support and help scaling their solution from a technical perspective. Once their business model is established and their solution or application is ready, later-stage companies tend to need support with marketing and go-to-market activities.

“We’re here to provide startups with tech and developer expertise that helps them scale, go to market, find customers, and identify funding.

“We have also introduced a programme benefit to connect startup members with our rapidly growing community of hundreds of VCs and investors. Startup members can indicate their funding interest on the Inception portal and connect to VCs and investors in just a few clicks,” explained Lemonde.

Other benefits include preferred pricing on select hardware and software products, free credits for self-paced courses and discounted technical workshops through the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI), and Cloud credits through NVIDIA partners, including AWS and Google Cloud.

“We are constantly evolving Inception to include new benefits to meet the unique needs that technology startups face. This includes introducing new technology training courses and workshops, providing generative AI certifications for startup developers, hosting pitch days with VCs, and creating pathways for members of Inception with several of our key partners.

“Startup members can expect to see new and refreshed benefits offered through our programme,” said Lemonde.

One startup making Wayves

Wayve, a London-based startup, is a member of the NVIDIA Inception programme. It specialises in developing AI foundation models for autonomous driving, equipping vehicles with a ‘robot brain’ that can learn from and interact with their surroundings.

“NVIDIA has been the oxygen of everything that allows us to train AI,” said Alex Kendall, Co-Founder and CEO of Wayve. “We train on NVIDIA GPUs, and the software ecosystem NVIDIA provides allows us to iterate quickly – this is what enables us to build billion-parameter models trained on petabytes of data.”

Wayve recently announced its Series C investment round – with participation from NVIDIA – that will support the development and launch of the first embodied AI products for production vehicles.

As Wayve’s core AI model advances, these products will enable manufacturers to efficiently upgrade cars to higher levels of driving automation, from L2+ assisted driving to L4 automated driving.

Other Inception members in the UK include Synthesia, Relation Therapeutics, and Eleven Labs.

This article originally appeared in the July/August issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe