Amazon, the tech giant known for its vast e-commerce empire, is making significant strides in the world of artificial intelligence (AI). In the company’s latest second-quarter earnings call on Thursday, CEO Andy Jassy shared updates on their latest AI-focused initiatives. The company’s emphasis on AI has led to substantial investments in this transformative technology.
Focused on Business Clients
While AI chatbots and image generators have gained considerable attention, Amazon has strategically targeted business clients with their AI services and large language models (LLMs). The company believes that the potential for generative AI extends far beyond consumer applications and sees three key opportunities in the AI space.
Powering AI with Custom Chips
At the foundational layer, Amazon is developing cutting-edge AI chips in partnership with Nvidia. These high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) are crucial for training foundational models and making predictions. However, a scarcity of supply prompted Amazon to create their own AI chips for LLM training and inference. These second-version chips offer an appealing price-performance option for customers building and running large language models. The company remains optimistic that their Trainium and Inferentia chips will lead the way in the future.
Large Language Models as a Service
The middle layer of Amazon’s AI opportunities revolves around offering “large language models as a service.” This approach appeals to companies seeking customized AI models without investing significant financial and time resources. Amazon’s answer to this demand is Amazon Bedrock. Launched earlier this year, Bedrock allows customers to tailor models with their data while maintaining top-notch security, privacy, and platform features. It features Amazon’s own Titan language models, as well as third-party models from esteemed names like Anthropic, Stability AI, AI21 Labs, and Cohere. Prominent companies, including Bridgewater Associates, Coda, Lonely Planet, Omnicom, 3M, Ryanair, Showpad, and Travelers, are already leveraging Bedrock to create powerful generative AI applications.
Enhancing Developer Productivity with AI
Among the early compelling applications of generative AI, Amazon CodeWhisperer stands out. This AI-powered coding companion integrates seamlessly with the code editor, providing developers with relevant code snippets that accelerate productivity. Amazon is dedicated to developing various generative AI applications to improve customer experiences, and while they will create some applications in-house, they expect the majority to be developed by other companies, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the preferred platform.
Data-Centric AI Approach
CEO Andy Jassy highlighted that data lies at the core of AI. To make the most of generative AI models, the focus should be on bringing the models to the data, rather than the other way around. AWS boasts an extensive range of storage, database, analytics, and data management services, making it an ideal choice for customers to leverage the power of AI with their existing data.
Stock Surge After Earnings Call
Investors were delighted by Amazon’s commitment to AI, leading to a surge in the company’s stock price. Following the earnings call, the stock price rose by over 9.5%, climbing from $128.91 per share at the market’s close to over $141 per share in after-hours trading.
Amazon’s relentless pursuit of AI innovation underscores its dedication to shaping the future of technology. With their focus on empowering business clients and providing AI services with exceptional capabilities, Amazon is well-positioned to play a leading role in the transformative AI landscape.
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