AI marathon - AMZN, the next NVDA ?
Will you be surprised to find out (as I) that among the "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks, the landscape of custom AI chip development looks like this:
-
$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$ - dominant leader & provider of AI GPUs used across the industry.
-
$Alphabet(GOOG)$ - has its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) - (in operations & use).
-
$Amazon.com(AMZN)$ - has its Trainium and Inferentia chips - (in operations & use)
-
$Apple(AAPL)$ - has its Neural Engine in its M-series and A-series chips - (in operations & use)
-
$Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ - Announced its custom AI chips including MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator) - (in operations & use)
-
Microsoft (MSFT)$ - Partnered with AMD to develop AI chips,and announced its Azure Maia and Cobalt chips (development in progress).
Technically speaking, 6 of 7 Mag 7 have either developed or were developing their own AI chips or accelerators — with varying degrees of specialization and deployment.
With AI still in its nascent stage, things are moves quickly and development pace is simply crazy.
Today’s post throws the spotlight on Amazon, that is reportedly working on its own AI processor to reduce its reliance on Nvidia for AI chips.
The e-commerce giant is getting ready to debut its AI chips.
Looks like, Amazon is trying to claim a share in the AI industry (?) and consolidate its position in the AI race.
It’s all in-house.
According to the Financial Times, Amazon has already worked on several in-house processors custom-made for its data center workloads.
Most of the information covering the AI processor development is expected to be released by the firm at its Trainium chip line-up next month.
Accordingly, OpenAI, that is backed by Microsoft, is already using the Annapurna Labs-developed chips.
Annapurna Labs is Amazon’s primary partner that (a) produces the AI processor chips and (b) helps with Amazon’s access to Anthropic’s Claude foundational AI model.
The e-commerce giant has decided to depend less on Nvidia because the latter is the only firm producing the most powerful and dependent AI processors.
Nvidia’s highly demanded GPUs are the best but are often short supply, resulting in them being very expensive and making AI development more costly.
Production Costs Prudence.
Amazon is not new to custom chip production.
Its strategic purchase of Annapurna back in January 2015, has enabled the firm to save money by using their own chips for its traditional data centres workloads, instead of buying from AMD and Intel. (see below)
Graviton processors, the ones made by Annapurna, work hand in hand with the custom AI processors called Trainium made by Amazon.
Amazon unveiled Trainium 2 in November 2023, and it is designed to work with large language models.
As with the alternative data center processors, Annapurna is also on the front to reduce Amazon’s dependence on NVIDIA’s GPUs as it is the developer of choice.
Although the Financial Times report did not reveal much about the features of the chips, it, however, said the firm will use the event that will cover Trainium 2 chips.
Anthropic is also using Trainium 2 but the chip has been in short supply despite it being launched in 2023.
According to Amazon, more than 500,000 AWS customers were using its Graviton chips in 2023.
Self Sufficiency.
Besides Amazon, other tech giants from Magnificent Seven have also gone into developing AI chips:
-
Google launched a tensor processing unit (TPU) AI chip, Trillium its latest offering early this November.
-
Meta Platform earlier this year launched its 2nd generation Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chip, reducing its dependancy on Nividia’s GPUs.
Strangely enough, big tech Apple Inc is still outsourcing their AI chips to TSCM for manufacturing.
It is also reported that the Microsoft-backed OpenAI is also looking at the possibility of developing its own chips with Broadcom and TSCM, that could arrive as early as 2026. (see above)
My viewpoints: (mine only)
I do not foresee doom and gloom for Nvidia, just because its Magnificent 7 peers are striving for self sufficiency.
Equally, Nvidia will not distress over Amazon’s foray into AI-chip manufacturing. It is business afterall.
The demand void left by them will be taken up by other up & coming companies, ready to embark on the long and winding road to AI-dom.
Rather, will Amazon be able to produce chips that are equal and rival that of Nvidia’s and have excess available for sale; not forgetting after sales service and support, that comes with the territory.
By the time all these initiatives come to fruition, it will be easily a year or two later.
Hopefully, by then AI would have become more accurate, reducing the need for fact-checking.
On Tue, 26 Nov 2024 Amazon recovered at $207.86, after slipping from its all time high of $214.10 reached on 13 Nov 2024.
Clearly, market is optimistic about Amazon and its new AI-endeavour.
When executed successfully, it will add to Amazon’s valuation and maybe, just maybe help grow it to be more than a $2.25 trillion mega cap company.
Must Read: Click on below titles to access. Repost to share, Like as encouragement ok. Thanks.
-
Do you think Amazon has sufficient gumption to mount a successful challenge against Nvidia ?
-
Do you think Nvidia’s AI chips will become less attractive over time with other Mag 7 embarking on self sufficiency ?
If you find this post interesting, give it wings! ️ Repost and share the insights ?
Do consider “Follow me” and get firsthand read of my daily new post. Thank you.
Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.
To grow demand, AWS is investing S$12 billion to its Singapore cloud infra over next 4 years, adding to previous S$11.5 billion invested since 2010.
Commitment to enlarge its global cloud presence shows confidence & vision to be where growth will be for next decade.
With AI self-sufficiency, its keeps cost low while advancing its growth/profit margin. Nice !
Repost to share. Like as encouragement Thanks.
Will there be more upside to AMZN (world's #1 cloud provider) as US market gears up for a Christmas rally in December 2024. Hope there is a bumper reward this year and into January 2025 for the returning president inauguration. Will he ensures that rally will cont'd ? Fingers crossed... Help to repost & share, so that more will know. Like as encouragement ok. Thanks.
It is, at least for now, difficult to match.
Pls "Re-post" so that more get to know. Tks! Rating is important (to me).
Consider "Follow me" and get first hand read of my Daily new posts? Thanks!). Tks!!
Great article, would you like to share it?
Great article, would you like to share it?