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☆ 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

☆ Leaked memo: Amazon requires cloud events to spend up to 80% of their time talking about generative AI
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Read previewExpect a lot more talk of generative AI at Amazon cloud computing events this year. "Up to 80% of all Global Summit sessions will be sourced from 2023 re:Invent sessions tagged to Gen AI." The new directive shows how Amazon is going to extraordinary lengths to promote its AI prowess, at a time when interest in generative AI is skyrocketing. On Tuesday, Jassy said Amazon is on pace to generate "multi-billion" dollars in revenue this year from its generative AI offerings. Generative AI has already been accounting for a larger share of Amazon's public comments.

Persons: —, Patrick Neighorn, we've, Andy Jassy, Jassy, It's Organizations: Service, Services, Business, AWS, Amazon, Global, Microsoft, Google, Meta

☆ 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

☆ Big Tech's AI spending plans mean big business for 3 portfolio stocks, including Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | In Kevinstankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Some of Amazon's spending is likely to go toward its custom AI chips, known as Trainium and Inferentia. But the Seattle-based tech giant also buys Nvidia chips. On Thursday's post-earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said AWS offers the "most expansive collection of compute instances with Nvidia chips." Alphabet's spending on AI chips has typically been split between its custom chips designed in partnership with Broadcom, known as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and Nvidia's offerings. Including networking products that stitch together parts of the data center, about 15% of Broadcom's semiconductor revenue was tied to generative AI spending in fiscal 2023.

Persons: Eaton, Brian Olsavsky, FactSet, Amazon's capex, Andy Jassy, Meta's capex, Susan Li, Li, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Meta, it's, —, Amy Hood, It's, chatbot ChatGPT, AMD's, Ruth Porat, Porat, Jim Cramer's, Jim Cramer, Jim, Florian Gaertner Organizations: Big Tech, Nvidia, Broadcom, Eaton, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Web Services, Facebook, Devices, OpenAI, supercomputing, TPUs, CNBC, YouTube, Photothek, Getty Locations: Eaton, Seattle

☆ Amazon's biggest generative AI product launch was rushed and flawed, leaving insiders looking for answers
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-10 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

"Q should be more polished, given how far behind we are," one of the Amazon employees told BI. An Amazon spokesperson said Q is not based on a single AI model, and its launch followed standard operating procedure. They said Q primarily used Claude Instant 1.2, a cheaper, lighter, and faster version of the AI model that was released in August. More approachable, but too simpleCurrently, Amazon Q is only offered in preview mode to select customers. Some AWS employees, however, say it feels like the company is in a mad dash to release new products, even if they are subpar.

Persons: —, Q, That's, Anthropic's Claude, It's, Google's Bard, Claude, Andy Jassy, Richard Brian Bedrock, Dario Amodei, Anthropic, Randall Hunt, Hunt, Corey Quinn, Quinn, Amazon's Trainium, Adam Selipsky, Selipsky, Amazon's Organizations: Service, Amazon, Business, Microsoft, Google, Claude, AWS's, Oracle, Duckbill, Nvidia, AWS

☆ Microsoft announces custom AI chip that could compete with Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

A custom-built rack for the Maia 100 AI Accelerator and its "sidekick" inside a thermal chamber at a Microsoft lab in Redmond, Washington. The first, its Maia 100 artificial intelligence chip, could compete with Nvidia's highly sought-after AI graphics processing units. In addition to designing the Maia chip, Microsoft has devised custom liquid-cooled hardware called Sidekicks that fit in racks right next to racks containing Maia servers. Moving from GPUs to AWS Trainium AI chips can be more complicated than migrating from Intel Xeons to Gravitons, though. WATCH: Nvidia notches tenth straight day of gains, driven by new AI chip announcement

Persons: Maia, Nvidia's, Rani Borkar, Borkar, OpenAI, OpenAI's, We've, they've, Colette Kress, Steve Tuck, Tuck, Graviton, Dave Brown, Brown Organizations: Microsoft, Intel, Google, CNBC, Amazon, Services, Nvidia, AMD, Computer, Companies, SQL, AWS Locations: Redmond , Washington, Seattle, New York, Gravitons

☆ Big Tech earnings highlighted big spending on artificial intelligence. Here's what it means for AI king Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | In Kevinstankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

All four companies are buyers of Nvidia's cutting-edge AI chips, which dominate the market for training the massive models that power applications like the viral ChatGPT. "I think that Nvidia is the quiet partner behind the winners including Microsoft," Jim Cramer said Friday. Notably, about 3 percentage points of Azure's growth was linked to customer AI spending, Hood said. Amazon Amazon's results and earnings call Thursday added to the body of evidence on AI spending as a priority at U.S. tech giants. This week's slate of Big Tech earnings left little doubt that, as more Nvidia chips become available, there will be a place inside data centers for them to go.

Persons: haven't, —, Jensen Huang, Jim Cramer, NVDA, Jim, Amy Hood, Hood, Ruth Porat, Porat, Susan Li, Brian Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Jassy, It's, Jim Cramer's, Jensen Huang Getty Organizations: Nvidia, Big Tech, Microsoft, Facebook, U.S, Google, Broadcom, AWS, Loop, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, CNBC Locations: China, OpenAI, Amazon's

☆ Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-04 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

There's a new stack of hardware, software, tools, and services that will power AI applications for years to come. Cloud 2.0Another key point here: Most AI developers already know how to use CUDA and Nvidia GPUs. Arguably, Nvidia has already created an AI cloud platform – as AWS once did for the Cloud 1.0 era. James Hamilton is an AWS cloud infrastructure genius who can take on Nvidia, even if the chipmaker has a major head start. Her startup spent months building a data center from scratch to help customers train AI models.

Persons: —, Jensen Huang, Nvidia Rick Wilking, Andrew Ng, CUDA, Michael Douglas, Bernstein, Douglas, Luis Ceze, Ceze, It's, Andy Jassy, Adam Selipsky, James Hamilton, Oren Etzioni, Claude, Dario Amodei, Anthropic Anthropic, Noah Berger, Sharon Zhou, Zhou, Lamini didn't, Etzioni Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Service, Home Depot, AWS, VMware, Cloud, Madrona Venture, Amazon, Amazon Web, Annapurna Labs, Intel, AMD Locations: San Francisco, Seattle, Selipsky

Amazon's employees and cloud customers will gain early access to technology from Anthropic as part of the deal, which they can infuse into their businesses. They declined to state how much Amazon now would own of Anthropic or the startup's updated valuation, last estimated at more than $4 billion. The deal also shows ongoing maneuvering by the cloud companies to secure ties with AI startups reshaping their industry. Yet with Monday's deal, Anthropic is giving a boost to Amazon Bedrock, a service that has attracted thousands of users to start building AI applications. Asked if Amazon would invest in additional AI startups beyond Anthropic, Selipsky said, "I honestly don't know what the future will hold."

Persons: Anthropic, OpenAI, Adam Selipsky, Dario Amodei, Selipsky, Claude, Amodei, Jeffrey Dastin, Kenneth Li Organizations: FRANCISCO, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Amazon's, GOOGLE, LexisNexis, Bridgewater Associates, Thomson Locations: Anthropic, San Francisco

They declined to state how much Amazon now would own of Anthropic or the startup's updated valuation, last estimated at more than $4 billion. The deal also shows ongoing maneuvering by the cloud companies to secure ties with AI startups reshaping their industry. Yet with Monday's deal, Anthropic is giving a boost to Amazon Bedrock, a service that has attracted thousands of users to start building AI applications. LexisNexis, a data analytics company, is working with Anthropic and Amazon to make its own legal search capabilities more "intelligent," Amodei said. Asked if Amazon would invest in additional AI startups beyond Anthropic, Selipsky said, "I honestly don't know what the future will hold."

Persons: Anthropic, OpenAI, Adam Selipsky, Dario Amodei, Pascal, Selipsky, Claude, Amodei, Jeffrey Dastin, Kenneth Li Organizations: FRANCISCO, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Amazon's, REUTERS, LexisNexis, Bridgewater Associates, Thomson Locations: Anthropic, San Francisco

☆ How Amazon is racing to catch Microsoft and Google in generative A.I. with custom AWS chips
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-12 | by ( Katie Tarasov | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

In this article METAGOOGLMSFTAMZN Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTChips as 'true differentiation'In the long run, Dekate said, Amazon's custom silicon could give it an edge in generative AI. Microsoft has yet to announce the Athena AI chip it's been working on, reportedly in partnership with AMD. So you train the machine learning models and then you run inference against those trained models," Wood said. Amazon's custom chips, from left to right, Inferentia, Trainium and Graviton are shown at Amazon's Seattle headquarters on July 13, 2023. An Amazon employee works on custom AI chips, in a jacket branded with AWS' chip Inferentia, at the AWS chip lab in Austin, Texas, on July 25, 2023.

Persons: Dekate, It's, Nitro, Stacy Rasgon, Matt Wood, Wood, Trainium, Nvidia H100s, Rasgon, Joseph Huerta, they're, Mai, Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Gartner, Swami Sivasubramanian, Sivasubramanian, Katie Tarasov Organizations: Microsoft, AWS, Amazon, CNBC, AMD, Intel, Bernstein Research, Google, Unit, Nvidia, Seattle, AI21 Labs Locations: Austin , Texas

☆ Amazon CEO explains how the company will compete against Microsoft, Google in AI race
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy doesn't believe the retail and cloud computing giant should be counted out of the artificial intelligence race just yet. Jassy has said Amazon intends to invest in AI across the company, and that AI programs have the potential to improve "virtually every customer experience." Earlier this year, AWS unveiled a generative AI service called Bedrock, where clients can use language models from Amazon and other startups to develop their own chatbots and image-generation services. AWS has also developed its own AI-specific chips, called Inferentia and Trainium, which aim to make it easier for developers to run large AI language models in the cloud. It's going up against Nvidia , whose powerful semiconductors have dominated the market for AI chips.

Persons: Andy Jassy doesn't, Jassy, ChatGPT, Jon Fortt Organizations: CNBC, Microsoft, Google, Web Services, AWS, Nvidia

☆ Ark Invest's flagship fund sold Nvidia before its big rally. Here's why
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Ganesh Rao | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

However, Ark Invest's flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) exited its position in Nvidia entirely in early January —before the chipmaker enjoyed a powerful rally that propelled it to a $1 trillion market capitalization. We saw this potential for deep learning and enjoyed a lot of that ride," said Frank Downing, a research director at Ark Invest. The growth of the industry and the urgent need for powerful AI hardware has led to an increase in the number of companies entering the market. Ark Invest hasn't been alone in trimming an Nvidia stake. However, despite exiting a portion of their Nvidia positions, both Ark Invest and Damodaran maintain a favorable outlook for the company.

Persons: Ark, —, We've, Frank Downing, Downing, CNBC's, we've, Aswath, University's Organizations: Tech, Nvidia, AI, Innovation, Ark Invest, ARK Autonomous Tech, Robotics, Google, Amazon, AWS, AMD, Intel, University's Stern School of Business, NYU's Stern School of Business, Ark, Damodaran Locations: New

☆ These 4 stocks could double in price — including one tech giant, says financial research firm
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-25 | by ( Weizhen Tan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Some corners of the market may have been overbought this year, but there are still long-term opportunities for investors, according to financial research firm Redburn. Redburn analysts have chosen 12 companies where changes in the competitive or financial environment or management action could realise outsize value for shareholders," Redburn wrote in a May 23 report. Vestas Redburn said it believes Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas is set for a "return to double-digit margins." "While there are inflationary pressures in some areas, supply-chain cost and performance are clearly improving and raw material costs are well below recent peaks," the firm wrote. Sabre Redburn sees a "clear path" for shares of Sabre , a travel tech company, to "more than double."

Persons: Redburn, Vestas Redburn, Vestas, Bill Anderson, –, Bayer, Sabre Redburn, — CNBC's Michael Bloom Organizations: Amazon Web, Bayer, Sabre Locations: United States, Europe, China

☆ Nvidia shares could pop up another 23% as surging AI workloads stokes stronger demand for specialized hardware, Bank of America says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Nvidia shares could rise 23%, Bank of America said in raising its price target on the chipmaker. AI workloads are rising and Nvidia's specialized hardware should benefit from stronger sales. Nvidia shares have jumped 90% in 2023 as interest in AI is fueled by ChatGPT. The note from the BofA analysts come after Nvidia shares have already soared this year on the back of the ChatGPT craze. The bank said sales of specialized accelerators in 2023 could overtake those of worldwide standard x86 processors.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he's confident he can get costs under control in shareholder letter
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +38 min

Further, as machine learning adoption has continued to accelerate, customers have yearned for lower-cost GPUs (the chips most commonly used for machine learning). While some areas of the economy have struggled over the past few years, Amazon Business has thrived. Some people have never heard of Amazon Business, but, our business customers love it. For years, Amazon customers had asked us when we'd offer them an online pharmacy as their frustrations mounted with current providers. More recently, a newer form of machine learning, called Generative AI, has burst onto the scene and promises to significantly accelerate machine learning adoption.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says his letter to shareholders follows one of the toughest economic years in recent memory. Read it in full.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +38 min

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