Calling all AI startups: here are competitions for you!

A list of startup competitions awarding prizes to startups focused on AI or machine learning

If you're a startup seeking opportunities to get funded, educated or connected, startup competitions are a great resource.

Vator has been holding its own competitions, using VatorX, to find and filter for the best startups. We've had some very successful and notable winners in the past that have gone on to raise big funding rounds including Thumbtack, DogVacay, Pokitdok, Grovo, Udemy and Apartment List, to name a few.

Anyone can list their program as VatorX is one of the most comprehensive listing guides to startup competitions, challenges, accelerators and programs. Click here to list your program!

As part of our weekly series, we'll look at top competitions with big cash prizes, as well as competitions that have teed up the most promising startups, to finding popular startup competitions you need to know about. 

Here are some of the startup competitions that are focused on the artificial intelligence and machine learning:

• Gigaom GAIN AI Startup Challenge

Description: "ARE YOU READY FOR THE AI REVOLUTION? YOU CAN BE. It won’t feature death-bots and laser guns, but ideas and radically innovative business strategies that will turn every major industry upside down. We’re bringing together the greatest minds in the world to help you figure out how to handle it. Welcome to the future."

Previous winners: LeadCrunch

• GPU Technology Conference

Description: "The 4th industrial revolution is going to be disruptive and become mainstream because courageous startups bring their ideas to market. These innovations span industries, use cases, and applications. From building a wearable device that understands the visual world for the blind, to weather forecasting accurate to the minute, these small and agile teams are breaking new ground every day.

Come meet the luminaries of the deep learning startup community, the NVIDIA Inception Program. Attend our award presentations and shake some hands in the exhibition hall at our Startup Square. The brightest minds in AI startups are here at GTC."

Prize: The winner in each category collects $375,000; the runner-up gets $125,000.

Previous winners: Horus Technology, Sadako Technologies

• Google Cloud’s Machine Learning Startup Competition

Description: "Google Cloud’s Machine Learning Startup Competition brings together the most promising young startups implementing machine learning."

Prize: $500k investment opportunity from top VCs, $1 million in GCP credit, technical support from Google engineers. 

All non-winning finalists receive $200,000  in GCP credit plus 10 G Suite licenses for 12 months.

Previous winners: First competition is taking place in summer 2017

• AI Startup Battle

Description: "AI has a track-record of improving the way we make decisions. So why not use it to decide which startups to invest in, and take advantage of all the startup data that’s available?"

Prize: Free exhibitor package at PAPIs worth $4,000 each. The winner of the battle will be invited to Telefonica Open Future's acceleration program and will receive funding of up to $50,000. 

Previous winners: Joonko

• Women Startup Challenge VR and AI

Description: "Women Who Tech is on a mission to fund women-led startups. Through our Women Startup Challenges, which have been held in Washington, D.C. at 1776, New York at Microsoft and Google, and San Francisco at LinkedIn, we have brought together the best early-stage, women-led startups using tech to rapidly scale and innovate. What’s next?"

Prize: Top prize is $50,000, and $15,000 in legal services from Paul Hastings. Second place winners hget $10,000 in legal services and three hours in consulting from 1843 Capital. Third place gets $10,000 in legal services.

Previous winners: Didimo, Spirit AI, Addicaid

• SAP Startup Focus

Description: "If you're a startup with a Big Data, predictive or real-time analytics solution - you're just what we're looking for."

Prize: Access to free HANA Developer Licenses to build your solution, 

Previous winners: AcuteIQ

• France is AI

Description: "We believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) will usher the next revolution in technology and accelerate the disruptions in almost every industry. FRANCE IS AI mission is to support and promote the French Artificial Intelligence ecosystem both locally and internationally, while building bridges with the other AI hubs."

Prize: A trip to New York and San Francisco to meet the US AI ecosystem and interact with top tier US VCs

Previous winners: Niland

• Vision Tank

Description: "The Vision Tank is the Embedded Vision Summit’s exciting start-up competition, in which five computer vision start-up companies present their innovations to a panel of investors and industry experts!"

Prize: $5,000 grand prize

Previous winners: Lucid VR

(Image source: technologyreview.com)