Amazon Unveils AI Advancements at AWS re:Invent 2024, Boosting Stock and Cloud Strategy

Amazon shares rise after annual cloud conference By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Amazon's stock is up over 2% Wednesday following its 13th annual AWS re:Invent conference, where the company highlighted its growing emphasis on proprietary technology and advancements in artificial intelligence. The event, held in Las Vegas, drew over 60,000 attendees and showcased Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)'s latest innovations, including custom chips, generative AI models, and retail-focused AI solutions. A key highlight was said to be the announcement of the Trainium2 chip, now available in AWS EC2 instances, with Trainium3 chips expected in late 2025. Apple's Senior Director of Machine Learning and AI, Benoit Dupin, endorsed the Trainium2, stating it delivered "up to 50% improvement in efficiency in pre-training" for Apple's AI products. BofA analysts noted the reduced focus on Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) GPUs compared to previous years but highlighted that AWS will still support Nvidia's new Blackwell chips in early 2025, suggesting a balanced approach to supporting both proprietary and third-party solutions. Amazon also entered the large language model (LLM) space with Nova-branded models. CEO Andy Jassy introduced innovations like Canvass for image generation, Reel for video creation, and a multi-modal "any-to-any" model set for launch in mid-2025. Amazon reportedly indicated that Nova models are 75% more cost-effective than competitors and integrated into Amazon's Bedrock AI platform. The advancements extend to Amazon's retail operations, where AI-driven improvements are said to be boosting efficiency. GenAI-powered chatbots have increased customer satisfaction, while AI-enhanced inventory management has improved demand forecasting accuracy by 10% and regional capacity estimates by 20%. BofA remains bullish on Amazon, citing potential AWS revenue acceleration in 2025 due to increased availability of advanced chips and the adoption of GenAI features. The bank sees Nova reducing perceived LLM advantages of competitors like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL). BofA maintains a Buy rating with a $230 price target, reflecting confidence in Amazon's expanding AI and cloud strategies.

Amazon Stock Moves Higher As AWS Unveils New AI Advancements: What You Need To Know - Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Apple suggests at the event that the company will use Amazon's Trainium2 chip to pre-train its models. Amazon.com Inc AMZN shares are trading higher Tuesday. Amazon Web Services made a slew of announcements at its re:Invent 2024 conference, including the general availability of Trainium2, new database capabilities, Bedrock updates and new foundation models. Here's what you need to know. What To Know: Amazon's biggest conference of the year, AWS re:Invent 2024, kicked off this week with sessions set to run through Friday. Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman on Tuesday gave his first keynote since taking the helm of AWS in June. The company announced the general availability of its Trainium2 chip and brought Benoit Dupin, senior director of machine learning and AI at Apple Inc AAPL, on stage. Amazon and Apple have been working together for years. Dupin highlighted some of the success the companies have shared and suggested on stage that Apple will use Amazon's Trainium2 chip to pre-train its models, per CNBC. Amazon said its Trainium2 chip offers 30% to 40% better price performance than the current generation and is purpose-built to support the largest generative AI workloads for both training and inference. Amazon also announced new features that make Amazon S3 Tables the first cloud object store with fully managed support for Apache Iceberg for faster analytics. The new features also include the ability to automatically generate queryable metadata, helping to simplify data discovery. Check This Out: Amazon And Walmart Dominate Black Friday As Online Sales Soar 14.6% Amazon further introduced new capabilities for Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB to support customers' demanding workloads. Amazon Aurora is a cloud-native relational database that delivers the performance and capability of a high-end commercial database, with the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of an open-source database. Amazon also announced new capabilities for its AI building and scaling service Amazon Bedrock that helps customers prevent factual errors, direct multiple AI-powered agents and create smaller, task-specific models. Amazon and GitLab Inc GTLB announced an integrated offering that brings together GitLab Duo with Amazon Q to provide a seamless AI-powered developer experience that combines DevSecOps workflows with Amazon Q autonomous agents to help companies deliver secure software more quickly. One of the latest announcements from the re:Invent conference is Amazon's new generation of foundation models called Amazon Nova. The following models will be available in Amazon Bedrock: Amazon Nova Micro, Lite & Pro: very fast, text-to-text model Amazon Nova Premier: multi-modal models that can process text, images and videos to generate text Amazon Nova Canvas: additional model that generates studio-quality images Amazon Nova Reel: additional model that generates studio-quality videos "Inside Amazon, we have about 1,000 generative AI applications in motion, and we've had a bird's-eye view of what application builders are still grappling with," said Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence. "Our new Amazon Nova models are intended to help with these challenges for internal and external builders, and provide compelling intelligence and content generation while also delivering meaningful progress on latency, cost-effectiveness, customization, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic capabilities." Amazon's AWS re:Invent 2024 event is ongoing and further updates will likely be announced throughout the week. AMZN Price Action: Amazon shares were up 0.89% at $212.58 at the time of publication, according to Benzinga Pro. Read Next: US Stocks Pause, South Korea ETFs Fall On Political Turmoil, Oil Prices Rise Above $70: What's Driving Markets Tuesday? Photo: courtesy of Amazon. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Amazon Web Services Mix Of Marvell And Trainium Still Trails Nvidia: Analyst - Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Analyst Justin Post expects more Gen AI partnerships and deployment of foundational models, and AI-powered applications from Amazon event. On Monday, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Marvell Technology, Inc MRVL announced an expanded relationship for AI and data connectivity products. The five-year "multi-generational" agreement covers multiple AWS products and cloud infrastructure, developing the strategic relationship. Leveraging its silicon technologies, Marvell will provide AWS with a "broad range" of data center semiconductors, including custom AI products (AWS Trainium2.0 custom AI ASIC), optical digital signal processors (DSPs), active electrical cable (AEC) DSPs, data center interconnect (DCI) optical modules, and Ethernet switching silicon solutions. Also Read: Taiwan Semi Supplier ASML Reiterates Outlook As Biden's Latest Semiconductor Embargo On China Kicks In Marvell will also leverage AWS compute infrastructure capabilities to give engineering teams more excellent infrastructure resources and flexibility to handle dynamic compute requirements and accelerate time-to-market for new products. Bank Of America Securities analyst Justin Post maintained a Buy rating on Amazon.Com Inc AMZN with a price target of $230. Post noted that a more profound, longer-term deal would likely incentivize Marvell to invest in custom chip development for AWS. The expanded partnership likely reflects strong demand for AWS's custom-designed Trainium2.0 chips produced with Marvell, as production will likely ramp up in the fourth quarter. Analyst Post noted that "faster ASIC ramp on better AWS Trainium2.0 and Google Axion demands" is driving Marvell's revenue upside potential, with Marvell's custom silicon revenue (mainly from AWS) proliferating throughout 2024 (custom silicon revenue is a share of Marvell's Data Center Revenue that has nearly doubled). The Amazon Marvell partnership expansion could also help alleviate some AWS dependence on supply-constrained Nvidia Corp NVDA chips long-term, as Amazon CEO Jassy noted at earnings that AWS has "more demand than we could fulfill" due to chip capacity. However, the AWS mix of Marvell and Trainium is still tiny compared to Nvidia. Based on Nvidia and Marvell data center revenue disclosures, Post estimated Amazon will likely spend $1 billion -- $2 billion on Marvell chips in 2024, compared to over $20 billion on Nvidia chips (Nvidia's data center revenue per Bloomberg is ~$113 billion for fiscal 2025, year ending January 2025, so AWS at $20 billion would be less than 20% share). AWS made several other announcements before the annual Re:Invent conference kickoff. Oracle Database@AWS is now available in limited preview form. It will be broader in the coming months as the two companies continue to partner and offer additional Oracle Database services. AWS overhauled the cloud contact center solution with new Generative AI solutions. Luxury automaker Lotus chose AWS as Its Preferred Cloud Provider for its self-driving development. Orbital Materials and AWS entered a strategic partnership to develop and pilot tech for data center carbon removal, chip cooling, and water utilization. With the Gen-AI cycle renewing customer demand for innovation, Post expects an eventful Re:Invent conference this week, with incremental announcements on partnerships across Gen-AI infrastructure, access and deployment of new foundational models, and new AI-powered applications. Price Action: AMZN stock is up 1.01% at $212.83 at last check Tuesday. Also Read: Microchip Slashes Q3 Revenue Guidance, Issues Restructuring Plan Photo by Sundry Photography via Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs