Only have 1 minute? Here are 3 key takeaways:
• Amazon Web Services has announced a donation of $1M for Bulgaria’s first AI Institute INSAIT.
• The funding is due to INSAIT demonstrating high performance and potential for growth and it will be used to support formal methods research.
• The cooperation also establishes a strategic partnership between the researchers and engineers of INSAIT and Amazon Web Services.
“This is an important step for us because formal methods are a fundamental area of computer science and of increasing practical importance in a wide range of fields, including information security, reliable artificial intelligence, robotics, and many others. The financial support will allow us to expand the field of our research in this area,” INSAIT’s founder Martin Vechev said in a statement.
According to AWS, INSAIT is the first world-class research institute in Eastern Europe, structured on the model of the world’s leading research institutions.
“In a short period, INSAIT has been able to attract outstanding international researchers in computer vision and machine learning, as well as strong Ph.D. students from around the world,” Amazon Web Services stated.
Additionally, the AWS support will help INSAIT attract top researchers in the field of artificial intelligence and formal methods.
“We are pleased to support INSAIT with a $1 million donation and to help attract professors to the field. The institute is an inspiring initiative, and we look forward to establishing closer research ties and collaboration mechanisms with students and faculty from it,” said Byron Cook,Amazon Web Services Vice President.
Launched in the spring of 2022, INSAIT was created in partnership with ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne, two of the world’s leading technology universities, and is structured as a special unit of the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.
Supported with $100M from the Bulgarian government, $6.5M from SiteGround, $3.75M from Amazon Web Services (AWS), $3M from Google, $550K from Bulgarian entrepreneurs, and $285K from DeepMind, INSAIT’s mission is to help transform local and regional economies into competitive and high-tech ones.
Last month, INSAIT was the only Eastern European institution to become a part of the global AI Alliance as a cornerstone research institute. The AI Alliance is a group of leading organizations across industry, startups, academia, research, and government coming together to support open innovation and open science in AI.
