Amazon Completes AI Supercomputer with Anthropic. What It Means for the Stock.

Amazon has developed in-house artificial-intelligence chips. (Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Key Points

• Amazon completed Project Rainier, an AI infrastructure project powered by nearly 500,000 Trainium 2 chips, described as the world’s most powerful AI computer.
• AI start-up Anthropic is utilizing Project Rainier for its Claude AI model and is projected to use over one million Trainium 2 chips by year-end.
• Amazon has committed up to $8 billion to Anthropic, while Google has invested approximately $3 billion in the AI start-up.

Amazon.com said Wednesday that it has finished building its flagship artificial-intelligence infrastructure project.

Amazon said it has completed its Project Rainier data-center cluster, which is powered by nearly 500,000 of the company’s Trainium 2 chips. Amazon Web Services describes it as “the world’s most powerful computer” for training AI models.

AI start-up Anthropic is using that hardware now to build and deploy its AI model, Claude, and is expected to be using more than one million Trainium 2 chips by the end of the year.

While no financial details were discussed, the news is likely to be reassuring for Amazon’s cloud-computing business, after Anthropic said earlier this month it would increase its use of chips from Alphabet’s Google.

Amazon will report its earnings after the market close on Thursday and the rate of growth in Amazon Web Services will be closely watched. Raymond James analyst Josh Beck wrote in a research note that Wall Street will be looking for around 18% growth, with 20% as a bull case.

“Early momentum with…[the] Project Rainier announcement has yet to see broadening follow- through as other hyperscaler/neo AI Clouds continue to keep the bar high for AWS,” wrote Beck.

Amazon has committed up to $8 billion of investment to Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI engineers in 2021. Google has invested about $3 billion in Anthropic, according to Bloomberg. In September, Anthropic said it had raised $13 billion in new capital in a deal that valued the start-up at $183 billion.

Amazon shares were up 0.4% in morning trading.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com