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☆ Microsoft's cloud is 'no-brainer' for some AI startups, helping Azure gain ground on AWS
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-02 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

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. The current offer includes $350,000 in AWS credits, plus $300,000 reserved for tapping the custom silicon, the spokesperson said. A spokesperson later said 58% of Y Combinator startups had taken up Microsoft's credit offer, a figure that doesn't reflect actual Azure usage. "Leading AI startups use OpenAI to power their AI solutions, therefore, making them Azure customers as well."

Persons: Amrutavarsh Kinagi, Kareem Nassar, Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, EzDubs, Krishnamurthy, Y, Annie Pearl, it's, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Hayden, CNBC InKeep, OpenAI, Nick Gomez, InKeep's, InKeep, Gomez, CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin, Prady Modukuru, Modukuru, Anthropic, Daksh Gupta, Gupta, Nassar Organizations: Google, Microsoft, CNBC, Amazon, Services, Alchemist, AWS, Hayden Field, Sync Labs, Sync, OpenAI Locations: Palo Alto , California, OpenAI's, San Francisco

☆ Amazon's cloud unit reports 19% revenue growth, topping estimates
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-01 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon said Thursday that revenue in its cloud division increased 19% in the second quarter, beating analysts' estimates. The company reported revenue for Amazon Web Services of $26.28 billion. While AWS continues to lead the cloud infrastructure market, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have been gaining momentum, due in part to early deployments of AI models. On Tuesday, Microsoft said revenue from Azure and other cloud services jumped 29% in the quarter, and last week Google said its cloud revenue, including cloud infrastructure and Workspace productivity subscriptions, also rose 29%. Companies have started consuming cloud services to deploy generative AI models that power technologies such as OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot.

Persons: StreetAccount, Matt Garman, Adam Selipsky, Andy Jassy, Garman Organizations: Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Companies

☆ Inside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI chip dominance
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-28 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

The in-house AI chip efforts have yet to make a major dent in Nvidia's grip on the market. 'Parity with CUDA'Internally at Amazon, Nvidia's CUDA platform is repeatedly cited as the biggest roadblock for the AI chip initiative. AdvertisementAn obvious response to this would be to have cloud customers use Amazon's own AI chips instead. AdvertisementFor example, AWS's AI chips still have "compatibility gaps" in certain open-source frameworks, making Nvidia GPUs a more popular option. Don't count Amazon outDespite Amazon's AI chip struggles, the effort seems to have caught the attention of Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang.

Persons: —, Bernstein, Stacy Rasgon, I'm, Rasgon, Adam Selipsky, Jensen Huang, Andy Jassy, Inferentia, Trainium, We're, Snowflake's, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Eóin Noonan, Ramaswamy, James Hamilton, Jassy, Gartner, Amazon's, Huang Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Google, Business, Nvidia, Intel, Amazon, BI, Annapurna, NVIDIA CUDA, Netflix, Neuron, AWS, Amazon VP, James Hamilton Amazon, Amazon SVP Locations: Inferentia, Toronto, Canada, CUDA

☆ Inside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI-chip dominance
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-28 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

"I'm not aware of anyone using AWS chips in any sort of large volumes," Rasgon told Business Insider, referring to Amazon's AI chips. This time, the idea is to avoid paying for expensive Nvidia GPUs, while still providing cloud customers with powerful AI services. An obvious response to this would be to have cloud customers use Amazon's AI chips instead. However, some of the largest AWS customers have not been willing to use these homegrown alternatives, the documents said. For example, AWS's AI chips still have "compatibility gaps" in certain open-source frameworks, making Nvidia GPUs a more popular option.

Persons: —, Stacy Rasgon, Bernstein, I'm, Rasgon, Adam Selipsky, Jensen Huang, Andy Jassy, Inferentia, Trainium, Omdia, Snowflake's, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Eóin Noonan, CUDA, Ramaswamy, James Hamilton, Jassy, Gartner, Huang Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Google, Business, Services, Nvidia, Intel, Amazon, NVIDIA CUDA, Netflix, Neuron, AWS, NVIDIA, Amazon VP, James Hamilton Amazon, BI Locations: CUDA, Toronto

☆ Amazon’s new cloud boss inherits a business under pressure to keep pace in AI
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-23 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +12 min

"It's very early days in generative AI," said Jassy, who succeeded Jeff Bezos as CEO in 2021. Davidson, told CNBC that Amazon was "caught flat-footed" by the generative AI boom. During a Q&A session on Wednesday, Jassy was asked twice about the status of Amazon's generative AI efforts. He said the company is "seeing a lot of momentum" in generative AI within AWS to where it's now a multibillion-dollar business based on annualized revenue. Amazon has previously said it intends to use generative AI to make Alexa more conversational.

Persons: Noah Berger, Andy Jassy, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Adam Selipsky, Jassy, Jeff Bezos, Matt Garman, Gil Luria, Davidson, Luria, Bezos, Selipsky, Casey McGee, McGee, Anthropic, Dario Amodei, OpenAI, it's, Garman, Amazon, wasn't, Dilip Kumar, Kumar, Swami Sivasubramanian, Jamie Meyers, Meyers, Matt, Jordan Novet, Kate Rooney Organizations: Web Services, Getty, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, D.A, CNBC, Amazon Web, Alexa, AWS, Nvidia, ChatGPT, Accenture, Toyota, Nasdaq, Investments Locations: Las Vegas, Vegas, Bezos, Anthropic

☆ Amazon's cloud business needs a 'bulldozer.' New AWS CEO Matt Garman fits the bill.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-15 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Read previewAt an October all-hands meeting, an Amazon Web Services employee asked executive Matt Garman about the company's difficult work environment. The people who spoke with BI about Garman asked not to be identified so they could freely discuss his abilities. One AWS employee pointed out to BI that Amazon Q was months behind the launch of Microsoft's AI Copilots. Associated PressOutside of AI, AWS has struggled in its core startups and small business segments, failing short of sales targets last year, as BI previously reported. Those customers are particularly important for AWS because the company built its early business by embracing that market.

Persons: —, Matt Garman, Garman, It's, Adam Selipsky, Selipsky, Andy Jassy, Matt, Amazon's, Patrick Neighorn, He'd, We're, Neighorn, it's, Claude, AWS's, let's Organizations: Service, Amazon Web Services, AWS, Business Insider, Employees, Business, Amazon, Stanford, BI, Mizuho Securities, Q, Cohere, Mistral, Google, Associated Locations: Anthropic

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he's committed to cost cutting while investing in AI in shareholder letter
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +41 min

This work diminished short-term revenue, but was best for customers, much appreciated, and should bode well for customers and AWS longer-term. We're also making progress on many of our newer business investments that have the potential to be important to customers and Amazon long-term. Being intentional about building primitives requires patience. Customers building their own FM must tackle several challenges in getting a model into production. Customers' AI models contain some of their most sensitive data.

Persons: Andy Jassy, Jassy, Jeff Bezos, he's, we've, Martha Stewart, Clinique, we're, We've, bode, We're, I've, iterating, We'd, we'd, Fox, affordably, you've, They're, Anthropic, that's, Claude, Dana, debugs, Slack Organizations: Amazon, Services, AWS, Deal, Prime, MGM, Savings, Regions, Citadel, Target, Storage Service, Netflix, Disney, Max, Paramount, CIA, . Intelligence, Amazon Freight, Carrier, Amazon Shipping, Foods, Drones, Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Clinic, Robotics, Nvidia, Ricoh, NatWest, FMs, Meta, Bridgewater Associates, Farber Cancer Institute, Delta Air Lines, Intuit, KT, Lonely, LexisNexis, Netsmart, Pfizer, PGA, Rocket Companies, Siemens, Media, Inc Locations: North America, U.S, Europe, India, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Middle East, Africa, Malaysia, New Zealand, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Berlin, Hulu, Amdocs, Genomics England, GoDaddy, GenAI

☆ Amazon's cloud sees growth rates slow from 'optimization' as customers keep cutting costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-11 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Either way, one thing is certain: Companies are getting serious about cloud spend. And while Wall Street analysts hope the excitement over generative AI will drive customers to spend more money on cloud services next year, it's clear that optimization won't go away. "Cloud spend got big enough at most of the Fortune 500s that it's actually material now," Storment said. Cloud cost-cutting servicesTo save money on cloud services, customers often must first spend money. Customers aren't spending much on generative AI yetEven though "generative AI is the new sexy thing that everyone is exploring," the technology didn't come up in many conversations about budget, Lowell said.

Persons: Adam Selipsky, Werner Vogels, Sid Nag, Gartner, Nag, wasn't, Dave Linthicum, —, Storment, Craig Lowell, Lowell, Linthicum, they're, Bernstein, Mark Schilsky, Ellen Thomas Organizations: Amazon Web, Business, AWS, Wall, Microsoft, Google, Deloitte, FinOps Foundation, Fortune, Venetian Convention, Expo, Companies Locations: Las Vegas, DoiT, ethomas@insider.com

☆ Amazon announces new AI chip as it deepens Nvidia relationship
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-28 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

It led to a shortage of Nvidia's chips as companies raced to incorporate similar generative AI technologies into their products. Amazon's own Trainium2 chips are built for training AI models, including the sort that AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and its competitors run on. More than 50,000 AWS customers are already using Graviton chips, Amazon said. Finally, as part of its deepening relationship with Nvidia, AWS said it will operate more than 16,000 Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, which contain Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia's Arm-based general-purpose processors. AWS didn't announce release dates for virtual-machine instances with Nvidia H200 chips, nor instances relying on its Trainium2 silicon.

Persons: Maia, Grace Hopper Superchips, Deepwater's Gene Munster Organizations: Services, Nvidia, Microsoft, Big, Intel, AMD, AWS Locations: Las Vegas, Graviton

☆ Amazon is reorganizing some cloud-computing services, like EC2 and Lambda, into a new team, leaked email shows
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon Web Services created an "AWS Compute Services" team, an email viewed by Insider shows. It combined services such as EC2 and serverless products like Lambda into a single organization. Amazon Web Services created a new "AWS Compute Services" team, according to an internal email viewed by Insider, combining services such as its Elastic Compute Cloud and container and serverless products including Lambda into a single organization. Deepak Singh, the vice president who previously ran AWS containers and serverless products, is leading the new AI organization. Barry Cooks, the vice president who runs the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, now reports to Brown.

Persons: Deepak Singh, David Brown, EC2, Holly Mesrobian, Brown, Nick Coult, Ajay Nair, Spencer Dillard, Ahmed Usman Khalid, Barry Cooks, Jody Gibney, Ashley Stewart Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Insider, Lambda, AWS, Web Services, Compute Services, Service, Registry

☆ Leaked document shows Amazon is in talks to expand its cloud contract with the Dutch government. It just passed a major privacy test, too.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon and the Dutch government are in talks to significantly expand the cloud deal between them. Amazon just passed an important data privacy test by the Dutch government. Amazon Web Services is in discussion to significantly expand its cloud contract with the Dutch government. The deal talks are taking place in the midst of a series of Dutch audits over AWS's data privacy measures, according to the document. Last week, AWS passed the Dutch government's Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA), a key part of complying with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR.

Persons: Amazon's, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, Dutch Ministry of Justice, AWS, Security, Data, New York Times Locations: Government

☆ Oracle hits record after 50% surge in 2023, defying tech struggles
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman and technology chief, speaks at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on September 16, 2019. For years, the database software developer lagged behind tech rivals in building cloud technology that met the demands of the modern-day enterprise. The shares are up over 50% in 2023, which would mark the best year for shareholders since the dot-com boom of 1999. Oracle got its latest boost this week after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue, prompting nods of approval from analysts. On Oracle's earnings call this week, CEO Safra Catz took a minute to express gratitude to the company's customers and employees.

Persons: Larry Ellison, Justin Sullivan, Larry Ellison's, Goldman Sachs, Ellison, Bill Gates, Let's, it's, Eric Lynch, Scharf, Salesforce, Kash Rangan, Oracle, Lynch, Safra Catz, Catz, Jefferies, Brent Thill Organizations: Oracle, Getty, Nvidia, Bloomberg, Microsoft, Scharf Investments, Google, Goldman, Amazon Web Services, Monday, Exxon Mobil, Pfizer Locations: San Francisco, TikTok, Cohere, IaaS, NetSuite, Los Gatos , California, Silicon Valley, A.I

☆ Amazon's cloud unit faces cost-sensitive customers as economic fears mount
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Peter Kern, CEO of online travel company Expedia Group , sees the cloud as an area where his company can reduce its fixed costs. Amazon leads the market in cloud computing, with an estimated 39% share. Selipsky said that moving IT jobs to the cloud could help budget-strapped organizations save money, citing customers Agco and Carrier Global . It offers Graviton computing instances based on energy-efficient Arm-based chips, a less expensive alternative to instances using standard AMD and Intel processors. He said AT&T 's DirecTV unit was able to eliminate 20% of computing costs by adopting current-generation Graviton chips.

☆ UK's Landsec sells 21 Moorfields property to Lendlease for $917 mln
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterSept 21 (Reuters) - British landlord Land Securities Group Plc (LAND.L) said on Wednesday it had sold 21 Moorfields, EC2 office property in London to an investment vehicle managed by Australia's Lendlease Group (LLC.AX) for 809 million pounds ($917.08 million). A 568,500 square feet property, 21 Moorfields was fully pre-let to Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) on a 25-year lease for housing the German firm's London headquarters. The FTSE 100 firm said the total consideration from the sale of 21 Moorfields represents a 9% discount to the property's value in March and the net proceeds would initially be used to reduce debt. Landsec has now sold 1.8 billion pounds of London offices following the strategic review in late 2020, when it undertook the decision to raise capital by selling mature office spaces. ($1 = 0.8821 pounds)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterReporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra EluriOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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