NVIDIA’s Inception program supports 4,500 European startups working in artificial intelligence (AI).
Stijn Verrept knew in 2018 that his company needed to find an unconventional solution if it wanted to develop a quality smart lamp that will detect the movement of an elderly person falling to notify caregivers.
Verrept, founder of the Belgian startup Nobi, tried manually calculating the distance a person could fall, mounting cameras on the ceiling or on the lamps themselves without any luck… The technology is designed so that the elderly can remain in their houses.
The company opted for NVIDIA microchips due to its great processing capacity and the possibility of quickly retraining the lamps.
In 2020, Nobi and its smart lamps joined NVIDIA’s Inception program “to help startups evolve faster through cutting-edge technology,” according to the website of the company.
Nobi redeemed NVIDIA credits worth $100,000 (92,000 euros) to store your company cloud AI trainingwhere it still remains today.
“It helped us a lot, because every dollar that we do not have to spend on the cloud, we can invest in development, and any technology startup has a high development component,” Verrept explains to ‘Euronews Next’.
According to an NVIDIA spokesperson, Nobi is one of 4,500 companies in Europe and more than 17,000 worldwide who receive support from the program.
Through Inception, NVIDIA offers an advantage to certain AI startups on the continent with “preferential prices” on your graphics cards, courses and exclusive events, according to its website.
It is one of the three investment arms that the second most profitable company in the world is using to build what they call a global AI ecosystem.
NVIDIA “provides the ingredients” to AI startups
Verrept estimates that the program has given his company Nobi a 18 month head start on building your prototype.
At Moon Surgical, a French-American medical technology startup, Inception allowed them to access NVIDIA technology to build a surgical robotics system Designed to assist surgeons with precision and control in minimally invasive procedures.
Jeffery Alvarez, COO of Moon Surgical, says that They have earned between three and six months to “refine the algorithms and make the hardware more reliable.”
Startups registered with NVIDIA can access training credits for programming courses and at preferential prices on the company’s products.
In 2023, two years after Moon Surgical joined Inception, NVIDIA became a formal investor in Moon Surgicalcontributing 55 million dollars (51.19 million euros) to the company in a financing round.
Mohamed (Sid) Siddeek, director of Nventures, the venture capital arm of NVIDIA, is now an observer on the company’s board of directors.
Serge Palaric, NVIDIA’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, previously told Euronews Next that the program Inception is part of a larger “ecosystem” of the company to work with “all AI companies.”
The objective of the program, Palaric continued, is to “provide the ingredients” to AI companies so they can develop their own devices, but “they are not developing the application for them.”
NVIDIA has invested separately in France’s Mistral AI and Hugging Face, as well as Britain’s Synthesia.
ADVERTISINGIs NVIDIA’s investment in these startups anti-competitive?
Anne-Christine Witt, antitrust law professor at EDHEC Business School in Lille, says antitrust lawyers would need to prove three things to make a case against NVIDIA or any startup program supported by big tech companies.
Between them, demonstrate that they have a significant market share, who misuse that quota to deter competition or who abuse their dominant position to acquire smaller companies.
NVIDIA’s market share is estimated to be between 70% and 95%, according to the media, but Witt says that having a large market share is not illegal.
According to its founder, Stijn Verrept, There are no conditions that force Nobi to continue using NVIDIA products or its Inception program. Nobi can still pivot to a cheaper, more efficient model if it exists, she said.
It is difficult for antitrust professionals to know whether there are merger control violations or other factors due to a lack of transparency from tech companies, Witt explained.
ADVERTISING“It is not information that is in the contracts and that we can make available to antitrust agencies,” Witt continued. “A lot of this is in the black box, everything is kept very secret.”
The European Commission has the Digital Markets Law (‘Digital Markets Act’), a new law that could help investigate violations of antitrust laws by artificial intelligence companies “on a case-by-case basis,” a spokesperson told ‘Euronews Next’.
The Commission declined to comment on NVIDIA specifically, which reportedly facing possible antitrust charges in Francebut did say that they are “investigating some of the agreements that have been made… between large digital market players and generative AI developers and providers,” and how they are affecting market dynamics.
