2nd Chair is proud to join another major Northwest startup support program: Microsoft for Startups. Microsoft has being positioning itself as a leader in AI. To do so, the company also fosters growth in AI startups. 2nd Chair is excited to have joined Microsoft for Startups.

What perks come with Microsoft for Startups?

Credits

For some startups, the cost of computing can be tricky. To run any AI process, businesses eat some cost to power the request. While building new features, or testing new offerings, businesses can be incurring costs but not yet generating revenue associated with that technology. This research and development can be dangerous to a startup when cash is tight and risk is high. While 2nd Chair is fortunate to not have such worries, the Microsoft for Startups program is great for startups generally. They eliminate this risk by offering to startups up to 150K to use toward free access to the latest generative AI models, including OpenAI GPT-4. Further, for any business, there’s cost to use the Microsoft suite, especially as a company scales. Microsoft offers $150k (USD) in Azure credits, GitHub, Microsoft 365, LinkedIn Premium, and more.

Experts from Microsoft

Building a product can be hard. Often, many technologies and tools are being deployed that a customer will never know or hear about. Unfortunately, software engineers or engineers more generally may not know every tool necessary to make the product work. Microsoft offers easy and unlimited scheduled with experts at Microsoft for startups to build and deploy in the Microsoft ecosystem. This includes not just building in Azure, but free access to industry-leading AI services, accessible for every startup in the program.

Scaling Support

The needs in a company trying to secure their first couple customers differs wildly from a company scaling to its first 1000, or 100,000. Microsoft for Startups has scaling benefits for any startup at any size.