NOTE: PLEASE APPLY ANYTIME! WE DO NOT HAVE DEADLINES OR COHORTS. WE ALSO WORK WITH TEAMS, NOT JUST SOLO EIRs.

Few periods in history have been more exciting to start a company than now. It's time to bet on yourself and control your own destiny. Let's invent the future, together!

THE GOAL:

You will become the founder of a startup and we will help you build your vision, extensively augmented with our own experience and with customer feedback. All of our support is designed to help you achieve three critical things in the first year (or sooner):

• Create/position the best product
• Build the best team possible
• Raise millions of dollars in venture funding to scale

WHO WE HELP:

(Learn more at ai2incubator.com/whowehelp)

We’ve now helped dozens of entrepreneurs succeed, who hail from all different backgrounds, and we can almost certainly help you as well. Both first time founders and experienced entrepreneurs alike are encouraged to reach out to us. That said, there are four types of entrepreneurs that most commonly succeed here:

AI Researchers

• Has a background in A.I. research and feels a calling/desire to commercialize their work, or the work of others in their related field.
• Is interested in the startup career path, as an alternative to BigCo or academia.

Software Engineers

• Works for top tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, etc.
• Or, works for a deep tech startup, and is ready to be the founder themselves.
• Or, is a senior, principal, or distinguished engineer.
• Or more junior engineers who have been rapidly promoted in the last few years as a sign of strong technical skills.

Scientists (Life, Bio, Physical, Health, Climate, Etc.)

• Has a background in life science, medicine, physical science, or engineering and feels a calling/desire to commercialize their work, or the work of others in their related field.

Product Leaders (Business, Design, PM, TPM, Etc.)

• Has the wherewithal to go from zero to something.
• Has clear leadership qualities, product vision, and the magnetism to attract talent.
• Experience taking an idea and turning it into a product that people love.

Small Existing Teams/Startups

In addition to working with individual founders, we also work with small teams that may already have an early product/prototype and even a pilot customer. It is absolutely fantastic to have a bit of momentum. But you are still in the 1st or 2nd inning of a 75-inning game and it’s still a long way until you achieve success. We can still be very helpful. Note: If you have a team, you can submit just one application for one person in the group. Just mention in your comments below that you are part of a team.

• Can be technical themselves or not.
• Can have AI expertise or not.
• Can have business/product expertise or not.
• Can be incorporated or not.
• Can have pilot customers or not.
• Can have raised some angel funding or not.

HOW WE HELP:

(Learn more at ai2incubator.com/howwehelp)

As your cofounder, we are with you every step of the way—from your initial idea, to your Series A, and beyond. Below is a typical flow, but please know that not every entrepreneur needs to go through every phase. Each founder’s journey with us is unique and can range from 4 to 18 months.

Phase 1: Validation (can be accomplished in as little as 30 days)

The first phase is about validating your idea and testing it with your market.

• Up To $90,000 Investment on Day #1
• UX/UI Mockups of your MVP
• Customer Discovery Research Support

Phase 2: Development (can be accomplished in as little as 60 days)

Once you have confidence in what to build, now it’s time to get serious.

• Co-founder Matching
• Up to $500,000 Pre-Seed Investment
• Up to $450,000 Cloud Credits
• Access to Stability/OpenAI Models
• Foundation Model Credits
• In-House Shared GPUs
• Access to AI2 Incubator FM Stack
• Applied AI Product Development Support
• Access to AI Researchers
• Significant Recruiting Help
• Access to AI Talks, Knowledge Sharing
• Product Strategy Guidance
• UX/UI Product Design Support
• Potential Pilot Customer Intros
• Private AI Founder Community Access
• Corporate Counsel Intros
• Visas & Immigration Support
• Coworking Desks in Seattle

Phase 3: Fundraising (can be accomplished in as little as 30 days)

Great products need an engine around them to scale properly and that engine needs capital.

• Business Model & Market Strategy Guidance
• Intellectual Property Strategy Guidance
• Seed Fundraising Process Execution
• Pitch Deck Design/Storytelling Help
• Pitch Deck Presentation Practice
• Endorsement & Credibility (w/ Investors)

SUCCESS/TRACTION TO DATE:

(Learn more at ai2incubator.com/companies)

In just a few short years, we have now helped to create 25+ startups that have raised $170M+ in funding. This small group has now achieved a collective valuation of $900M+ and counting, with 5 companies raising Series A and counting, and one company raising Series B (a remarkably high breakout rate). Further, these startups have now created over 700+ jobs, and at least two have exited. Read more about some of our track record here:

• https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/apple-buys-edge-based-ai-startup-xnor-ai-for-a-reported-200m/
• https://www.geekwire.com/2021/silicon-valley-firm-khosla-ventures-makes-rare-seattle-investment-leading-11m-round-lexion/
• https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-vets-land-10m-whylabs-seattle-startup-monitors-machine-learning-models/
• https://www.geekwire.com/2021/wellsaid-labs-raises-10-million-boost-synthetic-voice-business-fueled-ai/
• https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/inno/stories/fundings/2022/07/31/ozette-series-a-madrona.html
• https://www.geekwire.com/2022/seattle-ai-startup-that-helps-professionals-improve-public-speaking-by-analyzing-speech-raises-6m/
• https://www.geekwire.com/2022/napster-co-founder-leads-secretive-seattle-startup-that-just-raised-3-5m-to-supercharge-productivity/
• https://www.geekwire.com/2022/stealthy-digital-health-startup-measure-labs-raising-cash-for-remote-care-tech/

OUR UNIQUE ADVANTAGES:

(Learn more at ai2incubator.com)

1) Strategic Relationship with AI2: The Allen Institute for AI (AI2)—the birthplace of the AI2 Incubator—is a world-renowned institute that conducts research in key areas of AI: language, vision, machine learning, and commonsense reasoning. Annually, AI2 receives $100 million dollars in funding from the Paul Allen estate and other major donors. Known as inventors of seminal works in the field of artificial intelligence such as Yolo and ELMo, AI2 is a magnet for top technical talent, with 10,000+ people from around the world applying for jobs at AI2 each year. We are proud of our strategic relationship with AI2 that allows us to lean into the expertise of 200+ researchers, engineers, professors, and staff who have collectively published nearly 1,000+ research papers at premier AI conferences, with 30+ best paper awards. Further, the AI2 Incubator’s Technical Director Oren Etzioni founded and led AI2 as CEO for 9 years. Vu Ha was a founding member of AI2 and led the development of Semantic Scholar from an idea to its public launch. And more.

2) Private Community of AI-First Founders: We have a vibrant group of dozens of active founders and successful alumni in our community. We gather together on a regular basis in our office, our Slack workspace, and at events that we host on a monthly basis. These amazing people may become your coaches, friends, knowledge-sharing partners, and more, all working together to help each other succeed.

3) Applied Foundation Models Expertise: Large-scale foundation models such as GPT and DALL-E have taken the world of AI by storm. Previous AI tasks—from text categorization to object detection—can now be accomplished with much less curated labeled data. This is huge for many companies building AI solutions using prior technologies. However, the new and even more exciting frontier is the exploration of using foundation models to generate things from email prose to software code, from design artifacts to visual arts. Companies such as Hugging Face and Stability AI continue to make steady progress making foundation models easily accessible, and the cost of training and running these types of models continues to decrease rapidly. We have a ton of experience in turning these important technological advances into impactful products and companies.

4) And Much More: Once you have capital and early customer usage, now it's time to scale your business. But there are lots of ways to do this, and each has its own pros and cons: Expand your customer base? Expand your product offering? Expand your geographical reach? Expand your team? How do you prioritize? How do you know if you’re making the right decisions? We’ve been there multiple times and we can help you work through them to success. Who knows what the future will hold for your startup, or for the world of AI. Perhaps it will fulfill its promise and usher in a new era of prosperity and enlightenment, or maybe it will just usher in a new era of low-quality cat videos. Only time will tell. Regardless, you will face many challenges. But whatever they are, we’ll tackle them together. We’re your cofounder, every step of the way.

DIVERSITY:

At the AI2 Incubator, we are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive environment and to encourage these values in our wider entrepreneurship community. We provide an environment of mutual respect where equal entrepreneurial support opportunities are available to all founders without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We believe that diversity and inclusion among our founders is critical to the success of our incubator and our spin-outs, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Invitation to our incubator program is decided purely on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

READY TO GET STARTED?

Please complete the form below! If you'd like to check out open roles at our startups as well, you can see those and apply here: https://jobs.ai2incubator.com/jobs.

Important note: If you have a team, you can submit just one application for one person in the group. Just mention in your comments below that you are part of a team.

PRIVACY NOTICE & DISCLAIMER

This job post is managed by The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2). AI2's job posts may include open roles for third parties, where applications are coordinated with the hiring party. By submitting your application, you hereby consent to AI2 processing your information as described in its Privacy Policy. You further consent to AI2's disclosure of your information and application materials to AI2 Incubator Inc. or AI2 Incubator startup companies.