SEATTLE – July 30, 2025 – Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Techstars, a pre-seed investor that is backing startups building a better future for everyone, today announced the launch of a global initiative designed to support underrepresented startup founders around the globe with hands-on technical training, expert business coaching, and direct access to funding and accelerator pathways. AWS Impact Bootcamps builds on AWS’s $30 million commitment to Black, Women, Latino, and LGBTQIA+ founders launched in 2022 and scales AWS’s global footprint in supporting hundreds more diverse founders beyond the U.S. to reach other countries around the world.
“Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not," said Dr. Nashlie Sephus, Principal AI/ML Tech Evangelist at AWS. "The Impact Accelerator was a great first step in offering outsized opportunity to Black, Women, Latino, LGBTQIA+, founders and others committed to the cause of inclusion for all, so they could get the capital, training, mentoring, and technical guidance they needed to innovate. With the AWS Impact Bootcamps, we want to double down on this support and reach more founders in more places."
The AWS Impact Bootcamps program will launch in six cities across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, including Atlanta, New York, Mexico City, and London in 2025 and Tokyo, and Berlin in early 2026. Each bootcamp will deliver an intensive two-day experience, equipping early-stage, underrepresented founders with deep technical training, tools, expert business advice, and access to mentors, investors, and community. In addition, founders will receive $5,000 in AWS promotional credits to get building on the world's leading cloud. Workshops will be managed locally by the program partner, Techstars.“
At Techstars, we strongly believe that great ideas come from anywhere and anyone, no matter their backgrounds or where they live,” said David Cohen, Founder and CEO of Techstars. “This partnership with AWS will allow us to reach founders we might not otherwise meet and give them the mentorship and guidance they need to scale.”
The first bootcamp, in Atlanta, will take place September 8-9, 2025, with additional programs launching in the following months. In order to apply, founding teams must identify as a member of an underrepresented community (Black, Women, Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and founders with disabilities) or demonstrate work, activities, or engagement that otherwise supports such communities. Applicants should also have a clear need for cloud technology and be self-funded, angel-backed, or have raised up to a Series A, with plans to scale or fundraise in the near future.
Best-in-class participating startups will be invited to the AWS Founder Retreat, a weekend featuring in-person investor meetings and a chance to win up to $50,000 in unrestricted grant funding, as well as additional $15,000 in AWS promotional credits. Top participants will also be considered for Techstars’ accelerator programs or Founder Catalyst pre-accelerator programs.
To learn more about AWS Impact Bootcamps and apply, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/startups/lp/aws-impact-bootcamps.
About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 117 Availability Zones within 37 geographic regions, with announced plans for 13 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Chile, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
About Techstars
Techstars helps founders succeed. Through our global accelerators, we invest in early-stage startups led by founders building a better future for everyone. We leverage our vast network of alumni, mentors, partners and investors to support entrepreneurs and build thriving startup communities. Since 2006, we have invested in industry-defining companies including Chainalysis, Zipline, DataRobot, Alloy and many, many more. www.techstars.com