Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy speaking with CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Mad Money in Seattle, WA. on Dec. 6th, 2023.
CNBC
Apple is currently using Amazon Web Services’ custom artificial intelligence chips for services like search and will evaluate if the company’s latest AI chip can be used to pretrain its models like Apple Intelligence.
Apple revealed its usage of Amazon’s proprietary chips at the annual AWS Reinvent conference on Tuesday. Benoit Dupin, Apple’s senior director of machine learning and AI, took the stage to discuss how Apple uses the cloud service. It’s a rare example of the company officially allowing a supplier to tout them as a customer.
“We have a strong relationship, and the infrastructure is both reliable and able to serve our customers worldwide,” Apple’s Dupin said.
Apple’s appearance at Amazon’s conference and its embrace of the company’s chips is a strong endorsement of the cloud service as it vies with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for AI spending. Apple uses those cloud services, too.
Benoit said Apple had used AWS for more than a decade for services including Siri, Apple Maps and Apple Music. Apple has used Amazon’s Inferentia and Graviton chips to serve search services, for example, and Benoit said Amazon’s chips had led to a 40% efficiency gain.
But Benoit also suggested that Apple would use Amazon’s Trainium2 chip to pretrain its proprietary models. It’s a sign that Amazon’s chips aren’t just a cost-effective way to inference AI models compared with x86 central processors made by Intel and AMD, but can also be used to develop new AI. Amazon announced on Tuesday that its Trainium2 chip was generally available to rent.
“In early stages of evaluating Trainium2 we expect early numbers up to 50% improvement in efficiency with pretraining,” Dupin said.
AWS CEO Matt Garman said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that Apple had been an early adopter and beta-tester for the company’s Trainium chips.
Apple “came to us, and said to us, ‘how can you help us with our Generative AI capabilities, we need infrastructure in order to go build,’ and they had this vision for building Apple Intelligence,” AWS CEO Matt Carman told CNBC’s Kate Rooney.
Earlier this year, Apple said in a research paper that it had used Google Cloud’s TPU chips to train its iPhone AI service, which it calls Apple Intelligence.
The majority of AI training is done on pricey Nvidia graphics processors. Cloud providers and startups are racing to develop alternatives to lower costs and are exploring different approaches that could lead to more efficient processing. Apple’s usage of custom chips could signal to other companies that non-Nvidia training approaches can work.
AWS is expected to announce new details on Tuesday about offering Nvidia Blackwell-based AI servers for rent, too.
Apple released its first major generative AI product this fall. Apple Intelligence is a series of services that can summarize notifications, rewrite emails and generate new emojis. Later this month, it will integrate with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the company says, and next year, Siri will get new abilities to control apps and speak naturally.
Unlike leading chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Apple’s approach to AI isn’t based on large clusters of Nvidia-based servers in the cloud. Instead, Apple uses an iPhone, iPad or Mac chip to do as much of the processing as possible, and then sends complicated queries to Apple-operated servers using its own M-series chips.
After four previous scrubs or delays in a row since August 7th SpaceX launches Amazon KF-02 Kuipeer Satellites after the 5th attempt August 11th 2025 at 8:35 AM SLC-40 Cape Canaveral, Brevard County, Florida USA.
Scott Schilke| SipaUSA |AP
Amazon shipped another batch of internet-beaming satellites into orbit on Monday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, after four previous launch attempts were interrupted by weather issues.
Monday’s launch is the fourth Kuiper mission, and Amazon now has 102 satellites in orbit.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 8:35 a.m. ET. Roughly an hour after launch, SpaceX confirmed all 24 of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites were successfully deployed.
The mission was originally scheduled for last Thursday, but SpaceX was forced to scrub the launch, along with three more attempts over the past few days due to rainfall.
For the second time, Amazon turned to Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, its chief competitor in the low-earth orbit satellite market, for help building out its constellation.
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SpaceX’s Starlink is currently the dominant provider of low-earth orbit satellite internet, with a constellation of roughly 8,000 satellites and about 5 million customers worldwide.
Amazon is racing to get more of its Kuiper satellites into space to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC requires that Amazon have about 1,600 satellites in orbit by the end of July 2026, with the full 3,236-satellite constellation launched by July 2029.
Amazon has booked up to 83 launches, including three rides with SpaceX.
While the company is still in the early stages of building out its constellation, Amazon has already inked deals with governments as it hopes to begin commercial service later this year.
“Trump’s assault has no modern precedent,” Moritz wrote, calling the attack a “vindictive political sideshow.”
Moritz, who spent decades at Sequoia Capital and has known Tan for nearly four decades, highlighted the CEO’s previous turnaround of Cadence Design Systems. Moritz said there is “no one better equipped to transform Intel’s fortunes.”
“Now the Intel board must decide whether to march to the beat of so many other corporate leaders and capitulate to the president’s artless bullying or to set an example for other companies and display some backbone,” he wrote in a piece published in the Financial Times Sunday. “Early signs of defiance are encouraging.”
Tan is set to visit the White House on Monday to assuage concerns about his background and discuss ways that Intel can work with the U.S. government.
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Intel shares were up nearly 5% Monday. The Wall Street Journal was first to report Tan’s White House visit.
In a post to Truth Social last week, Trump called for Tan’s resignation and said the 65-year-old was “highly CONFLICTED.” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. has also raised questions over Tan’s ties to Chinese companies and the potential national security risks.
Tan later addressed the “misinformation” in a letter to employees, saying that he has “always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards.”
Moritz joined Sequoia Capital in 1986 and stepped down in 2023. During his tenure, he made successful early bets on the likes of Google and PayPal.
C3 AI said Friday that it expects to report revenue between $70.2 million and $70.4 million for its fiscal first quarter 2026, though those figures are unaudited, preliminary estimates. The company reported $87.2 million in revenue during the same period a year earlier.
Thomas Siebel, C3 AI’s CEO, said in a statement that sales results during the quarter were “completely unacceptable.” He attributed the performance to the “disruptive effect” of the reorganization, as well as his ongoing health issues.
The company expects to report a GAAP loss from operations for the quarter between $124.7 million and $124.9 million, a much wider loss than a year ago, when C3 AI had a loss of $72.59 million.
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“Unfortunately, dealing with these health issues prevented me from participating in the sales process as actively as I have in the past,” Siebel said in a statement. “With the benefit of hindsight, it is now apparent that my active participation in the sales process may have had a greater impact than I previously thought.”
Siebel announced in July that he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease earlier this year, resulting in “significant visual impairment.” C3 AI’s board and Siebel have kicked off a search for the company’s next chief executive.
C3 AI said its sales and services restructuring is complete, and Siebel said his health has “improved dramatically” except for his vision impairment. He said he is feeling strong and fully engaged, and will work to quickly identify “excellent” CEO candidates.
“I am confident the company is positioned to accelerate going forward,” Siebel said.
The company is scheduled to hold a conference call for first quarter results on Sept. 3 at 5 p.m. ET.