Amazon has lagged OpenAI and Anthropic, but AI chief sees path to catch up in 'coming year'

Amazon's leading artificial intelligence executive shared ambitious plans during a recent CNBC interview, expressing confidence that the tech giant can catch up to industry frontrunners OpenAI and Anthropic within the next year. Peter DeSantis, senior vice president overseeing Amazon's semiconductor, AI, and quantum initiatives, acknowledged that the company has not been at the forefront of the most demanding AI workloads. DeSantis emphasized the company's commitment to establishing a solid foundation, including data and infrastructure, to support its AI ambitions. "We've been taking a very deliberate approach to get our foundations right," he noted, highlighting Amazon's strategic focus on developing robust AI models. In response to the growing AI landscape, Amazon has adopted a dual strategy. One aspect involves its Bedrock product, a marketplace that allows cloud computing customers to access models from various companies. Additionally, Amazon launched Nova2, its latest AI model, last December, aiming to compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic. DeSantis expressed enthusiasm about Nova2, stating, "We've got about 50,000 customers for Nova2, so we're pretty excited about it," and highlighted the aspiration to be recognized for having one of the most capable AI models in the market. Amazon's AI strategy is also closely tied to its proprietary semiconductors, particularly the Trainium and Graviton chips. The company has invested in designing custom chips for several years, which DeSantis compared to Nvidia's approach in chip development. "We're one of a very few players who have the ability to design a chip and handle its production," he explained. Currently, Amazon primarily offers its computing capacity through Amazon Web Services (AWS), where Anthropic is one of its significant clients. However, CEO Andy Jassy hinted at the possibility of selling Trainium chips to third parties in the future. DeSantis clarified that while there is no definitive timeline for this move, the company anticipates a surge in innovations related to AI infrastructure deployment. He stated, "I think that we're going to see an explosion in innovations for how people want to deploy AI infrastructure, and we want to be a part of that." Additionally, he left open the potential for Graviton chips to also be sold externally, indicating that while the current focus is on AWS, future developments could lead to broader distribution.