Many of the AI startups competing for Mastercard fund grants to help small businesses across Europe were like “sizzle without the steak”, according to the executive heading up the fund.

Payal Dalal, executive vice president, global programs at the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth, was speaking on the Tech.eu podcast.

Dalal was talking about the recent ten winners of the Mastercard Strive EU Innovation Fund.

The fund awards grants of up to €500k to ten startups creating digital and data-driven solutions for small businesses across Europe.

Talking about applicants for the fund, Dalal said:

“We got so many applicants focused on AI because the truth is, at the moment, it’s big multinationals that can harness the power but micro and small businesses can’t but if they could imagine how much time and money they could save?”

Dalal added::

“Almost 50 per cent of the applicants had a focus on AI. What we did find, candidly, is that a lot of those AI candidates were not very strong.”

The executive said that when Mastercard applied due diligence to these AI candidates and asked whether they were feasible, they fell short.

She added:

“A lot of those AI applicants, it was a lot of, I guess we’ll call it sizzle without the steak.”