The head of Amazon’s cloud division used the recent turmoil at OpenAI as a way to launch a thinly-veiled attack against Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor.
Adam Selipsky took aim at Microsoft, his main rival in cloud computing. Amazon Web Services had announced custom processors for servers and AI two weeks before Microsoft unveiled its own. They also introduced a new AI assistant for the workplace that competes against Microsoft’s OpenAI powered Copilot.
Satya Nadella is the chief executive officer of Microsoft. Microsoft has an exclusive partnership in place with OpenAI. Satya Nadella rushed to defend OpenAI’s cofounder Sam Altman after he was suddenly removed as CEO earlier this month.
Selipsky said that the AWS CEO, Selipsky, spoke at the annual developer conference held in Las Vegas, on Tuesday. “Things move so fast [in AI] that the ability to adjust is the most important capability you can have.” “You do not want a cloud service provider who is primarily reliant on one provider model, you need real choice.” . . “The events of the last 10 days have shown that to be true.”
The comments were a subtle but clear reference to the boardroom drama that gripped Silicon Valley when Altman was fired, then reinstated in a matter of days.
Amazon’s aim was to provide corporate clients with a variety of AI models to counter Microsoft’s bet that OpenAI would fuel growth in Azure. Amazon has also signed an investment agreement worth up to $ 4 billion with OpenAI’s main rival, Anthropic. Anthropic has committed to using AWS Trainium, the chip that Amazon developed for large artificial intelligence systems.
Selipsky claimed that the fourth version Graviton processors – a general-purpose chips based on UK chip designer Arm architecture – was “the most energy-efficient chip ever built”. Amazon has also shown off the second generation Trainium. According to Selipsky, it will be “ideal” for training models with hundreds of millions or trillions of parameters when available next year.
Microsoft launched the AI accelerator Maia two weeks ago, and Cobalt a central processor unit based on Arm Technology.
Amazon, while touting its rival AI chip, also deepened their partnership with Nvidia. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, joined Selipsky in Las Vegas, two weeks after he appeared alongside Nadella during a Microsoft event. AWS customers will have access to Nvidia’s latest AI processors, and its “AI training as a services” platform, DGX Cloud.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are increasing their investment in semiconductors to optimize their infrastructure and lower operating costs. The three companies are also working to develop alternatives to Nvidia’s processors, which dominate the market for giant AI models like OpenAI’s GPT. They maintain alliances with Nvidia while trying to find new solutions.
Microsoft’s alliance with OpenAI has helped Microsoft close some of the gap between AWS and Microsoft in the cloud computing market. Microsoft Azure users can now access the large language model that powers the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Amazon Q was also introduced on Tuesday. This AI assistant is designed for companies and their employees. In some ways, it competes with Microsoft Copilot which helps write Word documents or code. Amazon Q is able to be customized to the data and systems of a business to create content, answer questions and analyze data.