Amazon Offers Free Computing Power for AI Research

By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) – Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)'s cloud computing unit announced on Tuesday that it will provide free computing power to researchers utilizing its custom artificial intelligence chips, aiming to compete with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) revealed it will grant credits valued at $110 million for researchers wishing to utilize Trainium, its AI model development chip, stepping up competition against Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD), and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s cloud sector.

AWS has already enrolled researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley, in this initiative, planning to make 40,000 first-generation Trainium chips available for the program.

This initiative follows significant competition from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), as AWS, the largest cloud computing provider by sales, has witnessed software developers seeking innovative chip options for AI tasks. AWS is differentiating its strategy to attract interest in its AI chips, as expressed by Gadi Hutt, who oversees AI chip business development at AWS.

Unlike Nvidia’s approach, where AI developers typically use Cuda software to program chips, AWS intends to publish detailed documentation on its chip’s instruction set architecture, allowing customers to program the chip directly. This strategy aims to attract large clients that may wish to implement small modifications, yielding significant performance improvements when using large quantities of chips.

"Think about folks that are using infrastructure and putting hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, toward rented computing power," Hutt elaborated. "They would take any opportunity possible to increase performance and reduce costs."