What Amazon is up to now

New 09-30 to 10-02: CHIPS OFF THE BALANCE SHEET, POWER AND A COMMUNITY PLEDGE. The FT reported Amazon is exploring moving about $8bn of Nvidia chips into a vehicle funded by outside investors; Amazon and Constellation signed a 20-year, 690MW Calvert Cliffs nuclear power deal (09-30); AWS chief Matt Garman announced 'Built Together', more than $1bn over five years for data-center host communities and an end to government NDAs (10-02); its Strands Labs released an open 2-billion-parameter 'decision model' (10-01). New 09-08: BUYING A SECOND CUSTOM-SILICON PATH. Amazon announced a multi-generational collaboration with Qualcomm on AI data-centre silicon, issuing Qualcomm a warrant for up to 25 million Qualcomm shares (the "$4 billion" of headlines — a warrant value, not cash). The substance for the toll thread is that Amazon already designs Trainium in-house and is now buying an additional external custom path rather than deepening the first, which is a different bet from the 08-27 commitment to two million more Nvidia GPUs and the Vera CPU. Read together, AWS is now running three silicon strategies at once: in-house, merchant, and a partnered custom design.

as of 2026-10-02