Google’s Launchpad Studio on Wednesday launched a new Studio initiative meant to support machine learning and general artificial intelligence (AI) startups. While the platform fueling the initiative often opts to finance promising tech companies directly, the idea behind the new venture is a much more complex one, with the Mountain View, California-based Internet giant looking to provide growing AI companies with a significantly more diverse set of resources than just cash. The Alphabet-owned company is looking to support this emerging segment through specialized sets of data that would help young companies feed their AI creations and allow them to process more information at an increased pace, consequently becoming better at whatever it is they were designed to do in a shorter time frame.
AI as a whole relies on big data and can never have too many information in practice, with each subsequent data set allowing it to either learn something new or confirm its previous conclusions, thus becoming better at the task it was programmed to do. Even some of the largest tech companies on the planet with massive resources like Samsung are struggling to advance their AI solutions due to a lack of big data, as the Seoul-based original equipment manufacturer (OEM) recently admitted that the English variant of Bixby Voice was delayed because the company didn’t have enough data to feed to its AI platform. The issue becomes more pronounced as the size of the company is reduced, and many of today’s AI startups are struggling to evolve their AI algorithms, i.e. provide them with data and monitor their creations evolve on their own. This particular problem is the one that Google’s Launchpad Studio is now looking to address in a broad range of countries around the world in which it currently operates.
In addition to big data, the initiative is also meant to provide emerging tech startups with Google’s talent pool of product experts, software engineers, and other professionals that can help them design, develop, and market their product. Launchpad’s Barak Hachamov is currently on the lookout for new promising candidates that could be enrolled in the program, though it remains to be seen how soon will the new startup studio begin realizing its ambitions.