EzDubs founders Amrutavarsh Kinagi (left), Kareem Nassar and Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy pose for a photo in Palo Alto, California, in August 2023.
EzDubs, a developer of language-translation technology, got started the way many tech startups get off the ground. It launched on public clouds from Amazon and Google.
However, after EzDubs went through the Y Combinator startup program last year, the company made a quick pivot, adding Microsoft’s cloud into the mix. That’s because EzDubs’ founders learned of a partnership that enabled Y Combinator companies to receive $350,000 worth of credits on Microsoft Azure.
It was a “manna from heaven message,” EzDubs co-founder Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy told CNBC. The credits were particularly useful, Krishnamurthy said, because Microsoft has been at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom, investing in OpenAI and hosting scores of projects that use the company’s large language models (LLMs).
On Azure, EzDubs was able to obtain access to the advanced …