Competitors in the AI ​​industry are collaborating on startup acceleration

Greater Western Artificial Intelligence Labs take a break Sniping Together to partner on a new accelerator program for European startups building apps on top of their models. Paris-based business incubator Station F will run the program, called F/ai.

Station F announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with dead, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI and Mistral, which she says is the first time all companies have participated in one accelerator. Other partners include cloud and semiconductor companies AWS, AMD, Qualcomm and OVH Cloud.

An accelerator is an intensive training course for early-stage startups, where founders attend classes and lectures, consult with professionals, and receive introductions to potential investors and clients. The overall goal is to help startups bring their ideas to market as quickly as possible.

The 20 startups in each F/ai cohort will undergo a tailored approach to help European AI startups generate revenue early in their life cycle, which in turn makes it easier to secure the funding needed to expand into the largest global markets. “We focus on rapid commercialization,” Roxanne Varza, director of Station F, says in an interview with WIRED. “Investors are starting to feel that European companies are good, but they are not hitting the million-dollar mark in revenue fast enough.”

The accelerator will run for three months, twice a year. The first edition started on January 13. Station F did not disclose which startups make up the group, but several have been recommended by Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, or one of the other venture capital firms participating in the program. All of the startups are building AI applications on top of core models developed by partner labs, in areas ranging from agentic AI to procurement and finance.

In lieu of direct funding, co-founders will receive more than $1 million in credits that can be redeemed for access to AI models, computing, and other services provided by partner companies.

With very few exceptions, European companies have done so so far It lagged behind its American and Chinese counterparts At every stage of the AI ​​production line. To try to bridge this gap, he… UK and European Union governments They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to support local AI companies, developing the local data center and power infrastructure needed to train and run AI models and applications.

In the US, tech accelerators like Y Combinator have spawned a host of household names, including Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash and Reddit. OpenAI itself was created in 2015 With the help of financing From Y Combinator’s research department at the time. Station F intends for F/ai to have a similar impact in Europe, making local AI startups competitive on the international stage. “It’s for European founders with global ambition,” says Varza.

The program also represents an opportunity for US AI labs to plant more seeds in Europe, using subsidies to stimulate a new generation of startups to build on their technologies.

Once a developer starts building on a particular model, it’s rarely easy to switch to an alternative, says Marta Vinixa, partner and CEO at venture capital firm Ryde Ventures. “When you build on these systems, you’re also building on how the systems behave, which is their weirdness,” she says. “Once you start with one organization, at least for the same project, you won’t move to another.”

The earlier a company starts developing a particular model in its life cycle, the more this effect is magnified, Vinixa says. “The earlier you start, the more you accumulate, the more difficult it becomes,” she says.