Google is contributing $2 million in cloud credits and $20 million in cash to a new funding program that will assist researchers and scientists in discovering the next big scientific discoveries through artificial intelligence (AI).
During a fireside chat at the closed-door AI Science Forum in London, Demis Hassabis, the CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind, made the announcement. This is part of a larger effort by Big Tech to win over young innovators and startups. This strategy has included acquisitions, equity investments, and cloud partnerships, some of which have drawn regulatory attention.
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This most recent announcement, made through Google’s 19-year-old charitable arm, Google.org, is unique in that it focuses on non-equity support for educational and nonprofit organizations around the world. However, like other Big Tech financing and cooperation programs, this will help Google gain the respect of some of the top scientists by giving them direct financial support and infrastructure to support their work.
This puts Google in a strong position to attract new clients in the future, especially those who are just starting and working on projects that call for a lot of AI computing power, which Google can supply.
This strategy is not exclusive to Google; only last week, AWS, the cloud leader from Amazon, released $110 million in grants and credits to entice AI researchers to join its ecosystem. A $20 million fund to help think tanks and academic institutions expand their AI expertise and a fund of comparable scale to operate a generative AI accelerator program for NGOs are just two examples of Google’s recent similar contributions in the AI space.
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Maggie Johnson, Google VP and worldwide head of Google.org, stated in an accompanying blog post that the one thing that successful applicants should have in common is that they will be employing “AI to address increasingly complex problems at the intersections of different disciplines of science.”
Research on rare and neglected diseases, experimental biology, materials science, and sustainability are among the areas that exhibit potential, according to Johnson.
