Amazon's (AMZN, Financials) Amazon Web Services is reportedly finalizing a $475 million agreement to provide IBM (IBM, Financials) with Nvidia (NVDA, Financials) processors over the cloud for artificial intelligence applications, Business Insider reported.
The five-year agreement will provide IBM access to AWS's EC2 servers, which have Nvidia GPUs, therefore allowing IBM to progress its AI model training capacity. An internal Amazon document referenced in Business Insider's report details IBM's possible increasing use of EC2 for artificial intelligence research.
This partnership emphasizes the strategic orientation of hyperscale providers such as AWS, which has significantly committed in building data center capacity, and the rising demand for Nvidia GPUs.
IBM revealed earlier this year intentions to combine Amazon SageMaker with its WatsonX artificial intelligence and analytics platform. “Our collaboration with IBM will bring even more generative AI solutions to our mutual customers,” said Ankur Mehrotra, general manager of Amazon SageMaker at AWS.
AWS has also unveiled its own artificial intelligence processors called Trainium and Inferentia. Last month in unrelated development, AWS secured a five-year contract with Databricks allowing the data business to use Amazon's Trainium processors.
AWS keeps growing rapidly; in Q3 2024, it earned $27.45 billion, a 19% increase from the previous year.
Separately, Amazon is experimenting with new models in the food industry to combine its Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh outlets onto one delivery system. Currently controlled by physical stores, this approach seeks to increase Amazon's dominance in the $1.5 trillion U.S. food sector.
Smart glasses meant to help delivery workers by offering directional direction and hands-free package handling are being developed by Amazon. Under the codenamed "Amelia," the project is at the experimental stage tackling issues like data collecting and battery life.
Using autonomous robots like Proteus, which negotiate facilities autonomously, and AI products include Rufus, a shopping assistant, and the Vapr system for delivery drivers, the corporation is also improving its warehouse operations. These developments seek to increase speed of delivery and efficiency.
