In a significant move to expand the AI startup ecosystem, Meta and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have unveiled a collaborative program aimed at helping early-stage companies develop cutting-edge applications using Meta's Llama AI models.
The initiative, announced at the AWS Summit in New York City on July 16, targets U.S.-based startups from Seed to Series B stages. Selected participants will receive up to $200,000 in AWS cloud computing credits and six months of dedicated technical support from both companies' engineering teams. The program also includes access to Meta's most powerful AI models through Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker JumpStart.
"We developed Llama because we believe greater access to powerful models is essential for driving progress in AI," said Ash Jhaveri, Vice President of AI partnerships at Meta. "Startups are some of the most creative forces in tech, and we're looking forward to seeing how they'll use Llama to push boundaries."
For Meta, this partnership comes at a strategic time as CEO Mark Zuckerberg intensifies his focus on becoming a leading AI player. The company recently formed a superintelligence team and invested $14.3 billion in AI startup Scale, hiring its founder and CEO Alexandr Wang along with other top talent. Meanwhile, AWS continues to strengthen its position as a key infrastructure provider for AI development.
At the heart of the collaboration is Meta's Llama, a leading open-source AI model that offers developers greater flexibility compared to proprietary alternatives like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. The significant AWS credits address one of the major barriers for AI startups—the high computing costs associated with developing and deploying sophisticated AI applications.
Applications for the program are being accepted through August 8, 2025, with selections based on the potential impact of proposed solutions and the technical capabilities of applicant teams. Interested startups must join AWS Activate, the company's startup hub, to qualify for the promotional credits. Final selections will be announced by August 29, 2025.