On Tuesday, Amazon announced that Uber is expanding its contract for AWS cloud services. Uber will run more of its ride-sharing features on Amazon’s chips, specifically expanding its use of AWS’s Graviton processors and starting a new trial of the Trainium3 AI chip. This deal is a notable win for Amazon against cloud competitors like Google and Oracle. Uber had previously signed major deals with Oracle and Google in 2023 to move its infrastructure to their clouds, even highlighting its use of Oracle’s Ampere ARM chips. Ampere, founded by former Intel executive Renee James, was partly owned by Oracle until its sale to Softbank. Oracle sold its stake, with Larry Ellison stating that in-house chip design is no longer a competitive advantage. Now, AWS has secured a larger contract from Uber precisely because of its own in-house-designed chips. Uber joins other major companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Apple in utilizing AWS for its AI chips. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said the Trainium chip business is already worth billions.
