Amazon is preparing to take on Nvidia more directly, and this time it wants to sell the picks and shovels of the AI boom rather than just use them itself.
Amazon's AI chief, Peter DeSantis, said that Amazon Web Services is in talks to sell its in-house Trainium AI chips to other companies for data center use. Until now, those custom chips have largely powered Amazon's own cloud infrastructure rather than being sold to outside buyers.
According to the source items, the disclosure came just days after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy laid out his ambitions to compete with Nvidia to shareholders. Jassy has framed selling the chips as a roughly $50 billion opportunity for the company.
One report notes that Amazon's custom chip business already generates around $50 billion annually, and that AWS holds about 28% of the global cloud market — scale that could give it a built-in springboard if it opens chip sales to external data center operators.
The move would put Amazon in more direct competition with Nvidia, whose GPUs dominate the market for training and running AI models. Selling Trainium externally would also set Amazon apart from rivals that mostly keep their custom silicon in-house.
Why it matters: Nvidia's near-lock on AI chips has made it one of the most valuable companies in the world, and a cloud giant the size of Amazon offering a homegrown alternative could give data center customers a credible second source — and put real pressure on AI hardware prices and supply.