Microsoft Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of US-based software provider Microsoft, launched a $3.5m global competition to help uncover new artificial intelligence (AI) startups yesterday.
Microsoft is collaborating with VC firms Madrona Venture Group, Notion Capital and Vertex Ventures for the contest, dubbed Innovate.AI, which offers a total of $3.5m in funding and $2m in credits for Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services, which will be split between four prizes.
The competition is aimed at early-stage startups that have raised less than $4m in funding and which are developing a product, service or platform that utilises AI in some form.
Three of the prizes are awarded according to region, with $1m in funding and $500,000 in Azure credits each going to the most promising startup in North America, Europe and Israel.
The final $500,000 in funding and $500,000 of Azure credits is the AI for Good prize, which will be allocated to the contestant that best uses AI to better society.
As many as 10 finalists can qualify from each region and will have the opportunity to pitch their startup in person for the chance to win the regional prize. Applications for the competition opened yesterday and will close on December 31 2017.
Nagraj Kashyap, global head of Microsoft Ventures, said: “We are excited to launch this competition with a strong group of venture capitalists that recognises the importance of leveraging these technologies to amplify human ingenuity and power innovation in AI forward.”