Amazon announces supercomputer for training AI models

The company's new giant server will lower the cost of AI as it seeks to build an alternative to Nvidia

- Belle Lin

Amazon's cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services Tuesday announced plans for an "Ultra-cluster," a massive AI supercomputer made up of hundreds of thousands of its homegrown Trainium chips, as well as a new server, the latest efforts by its AI chip design lab based in Austin, Texas.

The chip cluster will be used by the AI startup Anthropic, in which the retail and cloud-computing giant recently invested an additional $4 billion. The cluster, called Project Rainier, will be located in the U.S. When ready in 2025, it will be one of the largest in the world for training AI models, according to Dave Brown, Amazon Web Services' vice president of compute and networking services.

Amazon Web Services also announced a new server called Ultraserver, made up of 64 of its own interconnected chips, at its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas Tuesday.

Additionally, AWS on Tuesday unveiled Apple as one of its newest chip customers.

Combined, Tuesday's announcements underscore AWS's commitment to Trainium, the in-house-designed silicon the company is positioning as a viable alternative to the graphics processing units, or GPUs, sold by chip giant Nvidia.

The market for AI semiconductors was an estimated $117.5 billion in 2024, and will reach an expected $193.3 billion by the end of 2027, according to research firm International Data Corp. Nvidia commands about 95% of the market for AI chips, according to IDC's December research.

"Today, there's really only one choice on the GPU side, and it's just Nvidia," said Matt Garman, chief executive of Amazon Web Services. "We think that customers would appreciate having multiple choices."