source: techcrunch ai: in more good news for amazon, snowflake signs $6b deal with aws for ai cpu chips
level: business
snowflake has signed a new $6 billion five-year contract with amazon web services. the cloud data storage company has always run on aws, though it also works with microsoft azure and google cloud. this deal is nearly as large as the total $7 billion snowflake has ever brought in through the aws marketplace since its founding in 2012. customer spending on aws accelerated, doubling to $2 billion in 2025 alone.
the growth is fueled by ai. snowflake's cortex ai tool lets enterprises query databases with plain language and generate summaries. the deal gives snowflake more access to aws's graviton arm-based cpus. as ai shifts from training to daily use and agents, cpu demand rises sharply. gpus handle training and reasoning, but cpus manage most other ai tasks, especially for agents.
amazon says its graviton chips offer better price-performance than nvidia's, though aws still uses nvidia chips. cloud providers are deploying chips rapidly to meet ai demand. aws recently signed a deal to supply millions of graviton chips to meta. this competition challenges nvidia, but nvidia's ceo says its new vera cpu opens a $200 billion market. the deals show how ai is boosting cloud providers regardless of which chip makers win.
why it matters: the deal highlights how ai workloads are shifting demand toward cpus, affecting cloud infrastructure choices and chip market dynamics.
source: techcrunch ai: in more good news for amazon, snowflake signs $6b deal with aws for ai cpu chips