Microsoft plans a four-month program for European software companies that have raised early-stage financing and work in areas such as connected factories and vehicles, AI, blockchain databases and computer vision.

The Belin-based “Microsoft for Startups” accelerator will give young businesses access to outside investors, technical advisors, Microsoft sales teams and $500,000 of Azure cloud-computing credits.

Get them while they’re young

“Startups represent tomorrow’s workloads,” Charlotte Yarkoni, corporate VP of Azure growth and ecosystems, told Bloomberg. “Not every startup gets a plane ticket to Redmond,” she added, but Microsoft wants to be “present in their technical communities.”

The hope is that, by helping the startups in their fledgling moments, and by getting them hooked on Azure, the company will be best placed to capitalize on their success in the future.

Similar schemes have been rolled out by Microsoft’s cloud competitors in the past - Amazon’s AWS Activate Portfolio and Portfolio Plus Packages offer credits to those in accelerators, incubators and Seed/VC Funds, while Alphabet’s ‘Google Cloud Platform for Startups Program’ provides $20,000-$100,000 in credits, as well as technical help.

The accelerator program is different from Microsoft Ventures, which takes equity stakes in startups. Launched last year, the organization has invested in several cloud companies, including CloudSimple, Rescale and CloudLanes.