In more good news for Amazon, Snowflake signs $6B deal with AWS for AI CPU chips

亚马逊再迎利好：Snowflake 与 AWS 签署 60 亿美元 AI CPU 芯片协议

Cloud data storage giant Snowflake has signed a new $6 billion five-year agreement with Amazon Web Services, the companies announced on Wednesday. Snowflake has always run on AWS, though obviously, these days, it is also available on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. 云数据存储巨头 Snowflake 周三宣布，已与亚马逊云科技（AWS）签署了一项为期五年、价值 60 亿美元的新协议。Snowflake 一直运行在 AWS 之上，尽管显而易见，如今它也已支持微软 Azure 和谷歌云。

For comparison on just how big this deal is for these companies, Snowflake has sold $7 billion worth of its services via AWS Marketplace total since it was founded in 2012, AWS says. So this new contract is close to all the money it has ever brought in from that cloud. It can do that because Snowflake’s customers are accelerating their spending on AWS as of late, Snowflake says, doubling in 2025 to $2 billion for that calendar year alone. 为了说明这笔交易对双方的重要性，AWS 表示，自 2012 年成立以来，Snowflake 通过 AWS Marketplace 总共销售了价值 70 亿美元的服务。因此，这份新合同的金额几乎相当于它在 AWS 云平台上历年营收的总和。Snowflake 表示，之所以能达成此协议，是因为其客户近期正在加速在 AWS 上的支出，预计 2025 年单年支出将翻倍至 20 亿美元。

What’s driving the growth is, naturally, AI. Snowflake has been offering its AI building tool, Cortex AI, for a couple of years now. It’s a tool that makes sense: Snowflake is where much of an enterprise’s data lives. The AI tool can provide features like a text interface for database queries (just ask, in regular language), summary reports, and so on. 推动这一增长的动力自然是人工智能。Snowflake 提供其 AI 构建工具 Cortex AI 已有几年时间。这是一个非常合理的工具：Snowflake 是企业大部分数据的存储地。该 AI 工具可以提供诸如数据库查询文本界面（只需用日常语言提问）、汇总报告等功能。

Of particular note is that Snowflake is signing this contract for more access to AWS’s home-grown ARM-based CPU chip, Graviton. As AI moves from training to daily usage to automation via agents, CPU usage skyrockets. While GPUs handle training and reasoning, CPUs handle most of the rest of the tasks associated with AI, particularly agents. 特别值得注意的是，Snowflake 签署这份合同是为了获得更多 AWS 自研 ARM 架构 CPU 芯片 Graviton 的使用权。随着人工智能从训练转向日常使用以及通过智能体（Agents）实现自动化，CPU 的使用量呈爆炸式增长。虽然 GPU 负责处理训练和推理，但 CPU 承担了与 AI 相关的大部分其他任务，尤其是智能体任务。

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last month boasted that Amazon’s own homegrown AI chips offer “better price-performance” than Nvidia’s offerings, though AWS still uses Nvidia’s chips in its cloud. Demand is so high for AI processing that cloud providers like AWS are deploying chips as fast as they can. On top of that, all of the major AI model makers (and many other AI offerings) have architected their apps specifically for Nvidia’s chips. Still, Amazon’s own chips are a more affordable option for the cloud giant to deploy. 亚马逊首席执行官安迪·贾西（Andy Jassy）上个月吹捧称，亚马逊自研的 AI 芯片比英伟达的产品具有“更好的性价比”，尽管 AWS 的云服务中仍在使用英伟达的芯片。目前对 AI 处理的需求极高，以至于像 AWS 这样的云服务商正在尽可能快地部署芯片。此外，所有主要的 AI 模型制造商（以及许多其他 AI 产品）都专门针对英伟达的芯片架构设计了应用程序。尽管如此，对于这家云巨头而言，亚马逊自研芯片仍是更具成本效益的部署选择。

Amazon, ever the price-conscious company, says it passes those savings along to its customers. Consequently, these chips are luring in new multi-billion-dollar deals. Last month, for instance, AWS signed a deal to provide millions of Graviton chips to Meta for its growing AI compute needs. That was a big win for AWS because Meta had signed a $10 billion deal with Google Cloud a few months earlier. 一向注重价格的亚马逊表示，它会将这些节省下来的成本让利给客户。因此，这些芯片正在吸引数十亿美元的新订单。例如，上个月 AWS 与 Meta 签署了一项协议，为其日益增长的 AI 计算需求提供数百万颗 Graviton 芯片。这对 AWS 来说是一次重大胜利，因为 Meta 几个月前才刚刚与谷歌云签署了一份 100 亿美元的协议。

More than that, these deals are serving as notice to Nvidia that competitive CPUs from the cloud giants are attempting to come for its lunch. Google has also been making its own AI chips for years. Microsoft just launched its Maia AI chip in January. Not surprisingly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last week that he’s more than ready to defend, and even grow, his turf. The new AI-specific CPU his company launched, called Vera, represents a ‘brand new” $200 billion market for Nvidia, he proclaimed after delivering another record-breaking quarter last week. And he’s already sold $20 billion worth, he said. 不仅如此，这些交易也向英伟达发出了信号：云巨头们推出的竞争性 CPU 正试图抢占其市场份额。谷歌多年来也一直在制造自己的 AI 芯片。微软则在 1 月份刚刚推出了 Maia AI 芯片。不出所料，英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋上周表示，他已做好充分准备捍卫甚至扩大自己的地盘。在上周发布又一个破纪录的季度财报后，他宣称公司推出的新款 AI 专用 CPU “Vera”为英伟达开辟了一个“全新的”2000 亿美元市场。他还表示，目前已经售出了价值 200 亿美元的产品。

While Nvidia may not be giving up market share to Amazon or any cloud provider that easily, AWS’s multi-billion-dollar cloud deals show how AI is lifting its boat. Whichever companies benefit most from the rise of AI in our work and home lives, the cloud providers are getting their share. 虽然英伟达可能不会轻易将市场份额拱手让给亚马逊或任何云服务商，但 AWS 的数十亿美元云协议表明，人工智能正在推动其业务增长。无论哪些公司从 AI 在我们工作和家庭生活中的崛起中获益最多，云服务商们都已分得了一杯羹。