Uber is the latest company to be attracted to Amazon’s AI chip
Amazon announced on Tuesday that Uber is broadening its partnership with AWS to migrate more of its ride-sharing workloads onto Amazon’s proprietary silicon. This deal involves a wider adoption of AWS’s energy-efficient ARM-based Graviton server CPUs, alongside a fresh trial of Trainium3, Amazon’s AI chip designed to rival Nvidia’s hardware.
“This deal is less about posing a long-term threat to Nvidia and more about Amazon making a bold statement of defiance against its cloud rivals, Google and Oracle.”
Historically, Uber managed its own data centers. However, in 2023, the company entered into major, multi-year cloud computing agreements with both Google and Oracle. The strategy aimed to shift the bulk of Uber’s IT infrastructure away from internal data centers and into these two cloud environments.
“Uber restated this goal in a public blog post as late as December.”
In February 2023, Uber initiated a strategic migration from its internal data centers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud Platform. This project presented a dual challenge: transitioning substantial workloads to the cloud while simultaneously integrating Arm-based compute instances into an environment that had traditionally relied on x86 architecture.
In that post, Uber specifically highlighted their utilization of Ampere-designed ARM chips within Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. This is where the narrative becomes intriguing. For anyone seeking a clear example of how deeply interconnected the players in Silicon Valley are, examining the history of Ampere provides a perfect case study.
Ampere was established by Renee James, a former high-ranking Intel executive, following her decision to leave the company after being passed over for the CEO position. Leveraging her network—including her background as an investor at Carlyle and her role on Oracle’s board—she successfully secured the capital needed to launch the firm. Oracle eventually acquired roughly a one-third stake in the company, a move that necessitated James stepping down from her position as an independent director at Oracle.
Notably, James served as a key board member in the vote to approve Oracle’s $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite in 2016—a company in which Larry Ellison had a significant stake. This transaction later triggered an unsuccessful shareholder lawsuit, with plaintiffs claiming that Oracle had paid an inflated price for the acquisition.”
Last December, Ampere was acquired by its major competitor, SoftBank, allowing Oracle to exit with a significant pre-tax profit of $2.7 billion. By the close of 2024, James had concluded her tenure on the Oracle board and has since moved on from her role at Ampere.
Oracle is aggressively securing capital to expedite the construction of data centers for OpenAI and Stargate. According to Ellison, the decision to divest from Ampere was driven by his view that internal chip development no longer offers a strategic edge. The company has since shifted its focus to purchasing hardware, as evidenced by its major supply agreements with Nvidia.
“Significantly, Oracle, SoftBank, and Nvidia form part of a cycle of deals involving OpenAI, which are designed to finance the model maker’s substantial infrastructure and data center growth.”
“Currently, AWS is announcing that it has secured an expanded contract with Uber, one of Oracle’s key clients, primarily because of its own custom-built chips.”
“Uber has joined other major tech firms like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Apple in adopting or expanding their use of AWS, thanks to these AI chips. Back in December, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted that Trainium had already become a multibillion-dollar business.”
(Check out our special tour to see the team and lab that designed these chips.)
