During AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas last week, CEO Adam Selipsky noted that out of 1,200 global unicorns, 83% of privately held startup companies with valuations over $1 billion run on his company’s platform.

Statistics such as these point to Amazon Web Services Inc.’s interest in attracting and nurturing startup businesses to build on its cloud infrastructure. One of the ways the company makes this happen is through the AWS Global Startup program, an invite-only go-to-market program supporting mid- to late-stage startups.

“We try to find the best technology out there that our customers are demanding today,” said Jeff Grimes, (pictured, left), senior manager for the global startup team at AWS. “We give them a fast track to the top resources we have to offer to help them grow their business.”

Grimes spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Savannah Peterson at AWS re:Invent, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by Eric Feagler (pictured, right), general manager of North America startups at AWS, and Jimmy Nannos (pictured, center), partnerships manager for global startup program at AWS, and they discussed how AWS supports up-and-coming firms through a network of partners and resources. (* Disclosure below.)

Wide array of services

The Global Startup program provides the resources to solve a technical challenge, find the right engineer or close a new round of funding.

“Our mission is to get and support startups as early in inception as possible,” Feagler said. “As they start to build, we’ve got a commercial team of solution architects and sales professionals that work with them. We have credit programs, we have enablement programs, and focus on everything from the very beginning to hyperscale.”

Startups that have benefitted from the program’s support include Sisense Inc., an embedded analytics firm, and Reltio Inc., a cloud data management business. The AWS Startup program is also fed by an ecosystem of partnerships established by the cloud provider over many years. One of these partners is Cribl Inc., an observability pipeline that announced its integration with Amazon Security Lake during re:Invent last week.

“One of my partners, Cribl, was a launch partner for that service,” Nannos said. “One of the coolest things as a partner development manager is working with them throughout the year — and my partner solution architect — finding these unique alignment opportunities with native AWS services and then seeing it built all the way to fruition at the finish line. I can sleep well tonight.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent:

(* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE