Amazon’s cloud is getting behind AI
Adam Selipsky CEO Amazon AWS
Adam Selipsky is shepherding Amazon’s cloud unit at one of the most important moments in tech history.
Selipsky, the CEO of the company’s cloud computing unit AWS, has been behind the various generative AI offerings Amazon has rolled out over the past few months as it aims to compete with Microsoft and others in the growing AI arms race.
The Associated Press recently spoke with Selipsky about how companies are spending on cloud services, Amazon’s investment in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and the future of generative AI.
Companies have been cutting cloud spending this year. Is that still happening?
A lot of our customers over the past several quarters have been pursuing cost optimization. We’ve seen that a lot of customers have gotten far through that cost optimization. And we have other customers who are still in the middle of it. We’re further through it, but it’s not over yet.
What’s your vision for generative AI?
We really think about three different layers of the generative AI stack.
At the bottom layer of the stack is the infrastructure required to do generative AI. We have a very large Nvidia GPU-based business and have designed our own computer chips.
Most of our enterprise customers want to use AI models that other people have built. And so that’s the middle layer of the stack.
At the top layer of the stack is consuming applications that have been built using generative AI. And for that, we have a coding companion for developers.
Can you chat with me about Amazon’s investment in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic? There are reports that Google, which is also backing Anthropic, is upping its investments. Some say this is becoming some sort of proxy war between Amazon and Google. Do you see it that way?
No, I don’t. We have a very close, very tight relationship with Anthropic that’s very beneficial to both companies. Anthropic has chosen Amazon as its primary cloud provider for its mission critical workloads. The majority of Anthropic workloads will run on AWS. Period.
Now, these aren’t exclusive relationships. They have very large computing needs. And Anthropic has obviously used other cloud providers over time.
Where do you see the AI race going next year?
I think you’re going to see a very rapid evolution and change. And that’s partially reflective of the fact that we are still so early in the evolution of generative AI. That’s why I think that adaptability and flexibility are incredibly important advantages for customers. For them to succeed with their business objectives and to delight their customers, they’re going to need to be very flexible, agile and adaptable in how they evolve their use of generative AI.