With 21 firms taking part, Amazon Web Services held its inaugural generative AI accelerator program last summer.

Why it matters: As big tech corporations vie to recruit startups to develop cutting-edge services using their technology, artificial intelligence (AI) is the next front in this war.

Howard Wright, global head of startups at AWS, spoke with Axios about the company’s initiatives to encourage AI startups to use its technology.

Pitch from AWS to startups:

“We try to make sure we have all the assets available to them. … We help with go-to-market, we can help with your product itself,” Wright says.

He continues by saying that over 280,000 businesses have received $6 billion in technology services credits from the corporation over the course of the last ten years through its Activate program.

“I think folks are widely surprised in terms of our go-to-market expertise. … They can go from having hundreds of customers to having thousands of customers,” he explains.

The AI chips from AWS:

“It’s going to take mega-companies like ourselves to offer choice to our partners. … We have some unannounced partners that are building on our custom silicon.”

Regarding rivalry with entities such as OpenAI:

The company spends a lot of time connecting with startup investors, accelerators like Y Combinator, and the like to make sure it’s getting the feedback about what entrepreneurs truly want. “We don’t necessarily focus or comment on others,” he says.

Regarding startup investments:

“It comes up a lot. … That’s not our forte — our forte is to provide the best engineering tools and credits to our startup ecosystem,” he says, adding that AWS prefers to defer to venture investors when it comes to this.