This article is courtesy of Techstars, the best global ecosystem for entrepreneurs to bring new technologies to market. From inspiration to IPO, Techstars empowers the world’s most promising entrepreneurs throughout their lifelong journey by providing a global ecosystem made up of tens of thousands of community leaders, founders, mentors, investors, and corporate partners.
With Amazon launching a new artificial intelligence platform that is available to outside developers and the holidays being right around the corner, interest in Alexa has never been higher. And now Techstars is getting in on the fun by announcing their expanded investment in the Seattle ecosystem with the Alexa Accelerator.
Offered in partnership with Amazon’s Alexa Fund, this program is designed to support early-stage companies advancing the state-of-the-art in voice-powered technologies, interfaces and applications, with a focus on Alexa domains such as connected home, wearables, enterprise, communication devices, connected car and health and wellness.
Applications for the Alexa Accelerator Powered by Techstars will open in January 2017 and the program kicks off in July. Techstars is excited to extend their partnership with Amazon, which has been a Global Network Partner for several years.
Seattle is a global center of excellence for conversational and voice-enabled interfaces, with major commercial and academic research centers including Amazon, the University of Washington, and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence driving rapid advances in the field.
The Amazon Echo family of products has quickly become the world’s most widely-adopted voice-activated computing platform, and the underlying services — Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Alexa Voice Service (AVS) — are now the most widely embraced developer APIs for adding voice capabilities to any computing service.
Companies selected for this program will enjoy access to the most advanced technologies and will work with accomplished leaders working to advance the capabilities of voice interfaces and their enabling technologies.
The program will operate in the University of Washington’s Startup Hall, an innovation space located on the UW campus and operated in partnership between Techstars and the UW’s CoMotion innovation center.
If you’d like to be notified when applications open or to receive more information about the program, please email us at [email protected].
Photo: Flickr / MjZ Photography
