Artificial intelligence is hot, and you can tell that because both giant companies and tiny startups are excited about it. Nvidia, which had $6.9 billion in revenues last year, is in touch with more than 2,000 AI startups around the world. And this week, the graphics chip maker and AI company took a step in figuring out which ones are the best.

Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, hosted a Shark Tank style event called Nvidia Inception to find the best AI startups. Huang and a panel of judges listened to pitches from 14 AI startups across three categories. They were filtered from more than 600 contestants who entered the Nvidia Inception contest, and the winners will walk away with $1.5 million in cash at a dinner on May 10 at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference.

“We are in the beginning of one of the largest computing revolutions that we have ever been through,” said Huang, at the beginning of the event. “The AI revolution is upon us.”

The judges include Gavin Baker, portfolio manager for Fidelity Investments; Tammy Kiely, global head of semiconductor investment banking at Goldman Sachs; Shu Nyatta, investor for the SoftBank Group; Thomas Laffont, senior managing director for Coatue Management; and Prashant Sharma, global chief technology officer for Microsoft Accelerator.

Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at Nvidia, said in an interview with VentureBeat that the company decided to create a meaningful award to recognize the amazing work being done by AI startups. The three awards will focus on the “hottest emerging startup,” the “most disruptive startup,” and the startup with the “most potential for social impact.”

I listened to the companies give their pitches to the judges, and this story will focus on the four companies that gave pitches for the hottest emerging startup. The qualifying rule for these companies is that they cannot have raised more than $5 million yet. There will be one winner in each category that wins $375,000, and the runner-up in each category will win $125,000.

By: DocMemory
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