An exclusive tour of Amazon’s Trainium lab, the chip that’s won over Anthropic, OpenAI, even Apple

Here's the thing: AWS isn't building custom silicon to win wars with OpenAI. They're building it to own the margin. $50B into OpenAI? That's not a partnership—it's insurance. The real play is making Trainium so obviously cheaper and faster on AWS that you can't run AI elsewhere without eating the cost difference. Lock-in disguised as innovation. Amazon's done it in everything else. Why'd they stop now?

Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple all signed up because the silicon is legitimately good. But good doesn't matter if the economics trap you. AWS understands that. Custom chips are the endgame for every cloud provider. Nvidia's era of monopoly pricing is ending—and they know it.