Although palace intrigue is dominating the news cycle around OpenAI, the AI firm and its accelerator programs are continuing to operate normally, according to the PR team.
Converge-2, the second cohort of OpenAI’s six-week Converge program for “exceptional engineers, designers, researchers, and product builders using AI to reimagine the world,” as the firm defines it in a blog post published this morning, was announced today.
The 10-15 businesses selected to participate in Converge-2 will receive a $1 million equity investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund, the $100 million-plus entrepreneurial tranche launched in May and funded by Microsoft and other OpenAI partners. If you do the arithmetic, that’s at least a $10 million investment in the Converge-2 initiative—not a little sum of money.
Converge-2 participants will also get access to tech seminars, office hours, social events, and chats with “leading practitioners” and OpenAI’s “community of builders,” according to the blog post. Importantly, businesses will not be required to develop on top of OpenAI’s APIs; OpenAI emphasizes that the initiative is “for anyone building or aspiring to build with AI,” but network effects are expected to make OpenAI’s technologies very appealing.
OpenAI welcomes applications from entrepreneurs of all backgrounds, disciplines, and degrees of expertise, including those located outside of the United States. It is not necessary to have prior expertise dealing with AI systems. However, OpenAI will ask that firms chosen dedicate at least four to six hours each week to the program from March 11 to April 19, with the first and final weeks taking place in San Francisco (OpenAI will pay travel fees).
The application deadline is January 26.
