Takeaways: 📌

🚀 Meta, Hugging Face, and Scaleway announce a new AI accelerator program for European startups looking to integrate open foundation models into their products.

🌍 A select number of European startups will gain access to cutting-edge open models and resources in the field of AI, accelerating the EU AI ecosystem and shaping the next wave of innovation.

🗓️ Startups can apply until 16 August 2024 via.

🤝 Meta has been working with Hugging Face, an open-source community-driven platform that hosts machine learning models and tools, and Scaleway, a European cloud leader for AI infrastructure, on an “AI Startup Program” to accelerate the adoption of open-source AI solutions in Europe. Applications for the program are now open to startups from across the EU member states, with the aim of bringing the economic and technological benefits of open models to the broader ecosystem.

🏢 The AI Startup Program is based at STATION F in Paris, allowing European startups to benefit from the resources available at the world’s largest startup campus. With the support of the HEC incubator, the program will accelerate five startups in the MVP or product stage, from September 2024 to February 2025. Startups from across the European Union are encouraged to apply, with a panel of experts from Meta, Hugging Face, and Scaleway selecting projects based on open foundation models and/or demonstrating their plans to integrate these models into their products and services.

🔧 The startups selected will benefit from technical mentoring by research teams at Meta Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), the company’s artificial intelligence research laboratory, access to Hugging Face’s platform and tools, and Scaleway’s computing power in order to develop their services based on open-source AI technology bricks. This program follows the first edition of the accelerator announced in November 2023, which supported Pollen Robotics, who are using Meta Llama and Segment Anything models to develop an open-source robotics platform, Fringuant, who are developing a body scan technology for fashion retailers, and Qevlar AI focused on strengthening cybersecurity.

📅 Applications are open until 16 August 2024, and startups can apply via 👉🏼 here.

Deadline for Applications: 2024-08-16