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

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NVIDIA's startup program supports 4,500 European startups working on artificial intelligence (AI).

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Stijn Verrept knew in 2018 that his company needed to find an unconventional solution if they were going to develop a standardized smart lamp to detect an elderly person's fall movement to notify caregivers. have been.

Verpit, founder of Belgian startup Noobi, tried to manually calculate the distance a person fell, with no luck mounting cameras on the ceiling or the lamp itself. The goal of the tech is to allow seniors to stay in their own homes.

They decided to turn to artificial intelligence (AI), with the company choosing NVIDIA microchips for their superior processing power and ability to rapidly retrain lamps.

As of 2020, Nobi and its smart lamp have joined NVIDIA's startup program “to help startups grow faster through cutting-edge technology,” according to the company. website.

Nobi redeemed $100,000 (€92,000) worth of NVIDIA credits to store its AI training on the company's cloud, where it remains today.

“It helped a lot because every dollar that you don't have to spend on cloud costs, you can put into development, and any tech startup is growth-heavy,” Verpit told EuroNewsNext. .

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

Through the launch, NVIDIA offers a headstart to select AI startups on the continent with “preferential pricing” on their graphics cards, courses and special events, according to its website.

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

NVIDIA 'Brings Ingredients' to AI Startups

Verpit estimates that the program gave his company Nobi an 18-month head start on building their prototype.

At Moon Surgical, a French-American medical technology startup, Inception gave them access to NVIDIA technology to develop surgical robotics systems that help surgeons with precision and control in minimally invasive procedures. .

Jeffrey Alvarez, Moon Surgical's chief operating officer, said it took three to six months to “optimize the algorithms and make the hardware more reliable.”

Startups registered with NVIDIA can access programming courses and training credits for preferential pricing on the company's products.

By 2023, two years after Moon Surgical's launch, NVIDIA became an official investor in Moon Surgical, giving the company $55 million (€51.19 million) in funding. round.

Muhammad (Sid) Siddique, head of NVIDIA's venture capitalist arm Nventures, is now a board observer at the company.

Serge Palaric, vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa at NVIDIA, previously told Euronews Next that the Inception program is part of the company's wider “ecosystem” to work with “every AI company”.

“We build a complete ecosystem to be able to solve and support businesses that [generative] AI,” Palark said.

The program aims to “bring the components” to AI companies so they can build their own devices, but they're “not building applications for them,” Palerk continued.

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NVIDIA has separately invested in France's Mistral AI and Hugging Face, along with Britain's Synthesia.

Are NVIDIA's investments in these startups competitive?

Ann Christine Witt, professor of antitrust law at Lille's EDHEC business school, said antitrust lawyers would need to prove three things to make a case against any startup program supported by NVIDIA or big tech companies.

These include showing evidence of having a significant market share, abusing that share to foreclose any competition, or abusing its dominance to acquire smaller companies.

“It would be very difficult to say. [the Inception programme promotes] anti-competitive conduct; As long as startups are free to move to another technology,'' said Dewitt.

According to the media, NVIDIA's market share is estimated to be between 70 and 95 percent Reportsbut Dewitt says having a large market share isn't illegal.

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According to founder Stijn Verrept, Nobi does not have a requirement to have NVIDIA products or its launch program. If it exists, Nobi could still pivot to a cheaper and more efficient model, he said.

DeWitt explained that it is difficult for antitrust professionals to know whether there is a violation of merger controls or other factors due to a lack of transparency on the part of tech companies.

“It's not information that's in contracts that we can make available to competing agencies,” DeWitt continued. “A lot of it is in the black box, it's all kept very secret”.

The European Commission has the Digital Markets Act, a new law that could help investigate breaches of antitrust laws by artificial intelligence companies “on a case-by-case basis”, a spokesperson told EuronewsNext.

The commission declined to comment specifically on NVIDIA, which is reportedly facing antitrust charges in France, but said it was “looking at some agreements between major digital market players and generative AI. between developers and suppliers,” and how they are affecting market dynamics.

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