via Greater St. Louis Inc.
St. Louis isn't just competing in the AI economy — it's about to be a premier hub for artificial intelligence and geospatial innovation with the debut of the Spirit of St. Louis AI Innovation Center.
GeoSTL, the nonprofit geospatial and AI economic development entity, will serve as the Center's administrator, working in partnership with a coalition of industry leaders from World Wide Technology, Amazon Web Services, Google, NVIDIA, Overture Maps Foundation, and WEKA, per a press release issued Wednesday.
The Innovation Center will combine high-performance computing, drive AI innovation and regional economic growth, and establish a new global digital utility for AI for public good, according to the release. To that end, 20% of the Center's total computational capacity will be dedicated exclusively to civic projects that benefit the public good.
"World Wide Technology was founded in St. Louis in 1990, and this region has always been at the heart of who we are," said Jim Kavanaugh, Co-Founder and CEO of World Wide Technology, in the release. "We're proud to sit at the center of the industry's technology ecosystem, connecting St. Louis to the innovation and expertise that help position it as a hub for AI and geospatial work — and the Spirit of St. Louis AI Innovation Center is a great example of that connection at work."