Zoom has launched AI Launchpad, a grant programme that gives eligible startups up to $150,000 in Zoom AI Services credits, with no equity taken. The credits are meant for founders building AI-native applications on Zoom's speech, language and decision-making APIs.
Zoom AI Services exposes the capabilities behind its own products as standalone APIs covering speech recognition, summarisation, translation, voice AI and decision intelligence. Zoom lists voice and customer service agents, conversation intelligence tools, multilingual applications and workflows built on its Decisions API as example uses.
Credits last up to 12 months. Participants may also get engineering guidance, a chance to showcase products through Zoom's developer channels and introductions to potential enterprise customers. Applications are open and are assessed on a rolling basis on product, team, technical approach, traction and plans to build with Zoom AI Services, and Zoom says a limited number of startups will be accepted. The programme is aimed at companies with speech, language or conversational AI at the core of their product.
X.D. Huang, Zoom's chief technology officer, said: "AI startups should spend time solving real problems, not stitching together infrastructure".
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