Will AI Prod Amazon into Becoming a Clean Energy Enemy? It's hoping Nukes will Help.

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Amazon has already started the process of becoming one of U.S.’s AI leaders — and with that possibly comes the prize of being a top American energy hog.

Its management knows it is in an AI race against Google, Microsoft, several smaller public companies and at least a dozen privately-owned AI firms, among them Elon Musk’s xAI, which has built the world’s largest AI server farm deep inside Tennessee.

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Amazon recently invested $4 billion in an AI startup called Anthropic. It has also signed a deal with Dominion Energy to build nuclear plants to support AI electricity needs. Amazon hopes to make several more of these transactions so that it will not rely completely on America’s current — and shaky — electricity supply and aging grid.

Why all these moves make a difference? Well, Amazon is upping its AI ante to compete with Nvidia in the AI chip business. Nvidia chips are the engine of the AI revolution, which is the primary reason it is the most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of $3.5 billion. According to Bloomberg, “Amazon.com Inc. engineers are toiling away on one of the tech industry’s most ambitious moonshots: loosening Nvidia Corp.’s grip on the $100-billion-plus market for artificial intelligence chips.”

Fishing for chips
Amazon will try to do what others have tried before and without success. The primary example is chip company AMD, which is second to Nvvidia in the AI chip sector. AMD’s stock is down 6% this year, while the S&P is 25% higher. Nvidia’s is up 188%.

Sounds like a risk worth taking.