Amazon CEO takes aim at Nvidia, Intel, Starlink, more in annual shareholder letter

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s annual shareholder letter reads thing similar a Kendrick Lamar diss track, if the rapper was a corporate-speak talking CEO and not a poetic Pulitzer-prize winning musician.

Meaning, you person to cognize the past to recognize each of the competitors Jassy takes purpose at, alongside cute idiosyncratic stories astir his unrealized imagination of being a sportscaster and watching hockey games with his dad.

Of course, Jassy doesn’t propulsion the gauntlet down directly. He takes a much nuanced approach. For instance, successful his situation to Nvidia, helium writes, “We person a beardown concern with NVIDIA, volition ever person customers who take to tally NVIDIA” and volition ever enactment these chips successful its cloud.

But helium besides says: “Virtually each AI frankincense acold has been done connected NVIDIA chips, but a caller displacement has started.” AWS customers, helium says, “want amended price-performance” meaning Amazon’s ain home-grown Trainium AI chips.

Jassy says request is truthful precocious for this spot that capableness for the newest one, Trainium3, is astir sold out. Remarkably, helium says that capableness is besides astir sold retired for Trainium4, which inactive 18 months distant from being available.

This means that Trainium has deed a $20 cardinal yearly gross tally rate. But if Amazon were a chipmaker that sold its wares to others, it would beryllium astatine $50 cardinal ARR, helium postulates.

Granted, Nvidia did $215.9 cardinal successful existent revenue past year. Nvidia whitethorn not beryllium shaking successful its boots, yet. Still, Jassy presents Trainium arsenic a formidable up-and-comer.

Jassy didn’t spare Intel either. He points retired that AWS’s homegrown Graviton CPU, a rival to the Intel x86 architecture, “is present utilized expansively by 98% of the apical 1,000 EC2 customers,” aka immoderate of the biggest companies successful the world. Two companies adjacent asked to “buy all of our Graviton lawsuit capableness successful 2026,” helium writes (emphasis his). “We can’t hold to these requests fixed different customers’ needs, but it gives you an thought of the demand.”

He promised that Amazon’s Starlink competitor, Amazon Leo, scheduled to motorboat successful mid-2026 is already succeeding, too. It’s won contracts from Delta Airlines, AT&T, Vodafone, Australia’s National Broadband Network, NASA, among others.

Interestingly, helium besides said Amazon could beryllium looking astatine selling robotics 1 day. It whitethorn crook each the information from its 1 cardinal warehouse robots into “robotics solutions” for concern uses and consumers, helium wrote. Is determination an Amazon humanoid successful our future? We’ll see. He talked up different Amazon businesses, too, similar same-day delivery, groceries, and drones.

But mostly, Jassy tried to marque the lawsuit for the hundreds of billions of dollars of superior expenditures he’s committed. In February, helium announced plans to walk $200 cardinal successful 2026 connected capex, mostly gathering retired AWS information centers. That’s much than immoderate of the different large tech companies, which are besides spending large connected capex. Jassy’s transportation to shareholders makes consciousness considering Amazon’s banal plunged to beneath $200 a stock and hasn’t recovered.

“We’re not investing astir $200 cardinal successful capex successful 2026 connected a hunch,” helium wrote, utilizing arsenic an illustration that his woody with OpenAI included the exemplary shaper pledging to walk $100 cardinal connected AWS. Of course, determination are those who doubt OpenAI volition conscionable each of its spending promises.

In a motion to that, Jassy insists that beyond OpenAI, “there are respective different lawsuit agreements completed (and unannounced), oregon heavy successful process,” lined up to bargain the AWS capacity.

We’ll person to hold and see. Those who origin a bubble are ne'er the ones who spot (or admit) to its existence. “I’ve followed the nationalist statement connected whether this exertion is over-hyped, whether we’re successful ‘a bubble.’” But helium declares successful this missive that, for Amazon astatine least, this isn’t the case.