Good news for Amazon. Again.
Snowflake just inked a $6 billion, five-year deal with AWS. The announcement dropped Wednesday, loud and clear. It’s huge. Huge.
Since 2012, Snowflake has moved $7 billion worth of services through the AWS Marketplace. This single contract comes dangerously close to matching everything the cloud data giant has ever earned from that channel combined.
Why the spike? AI spending is exploding. Snowflake says customer spend on AWS is set to double to $2 billion in 2025 alone.
It’s all about the new AI features. Cortex AI, a tool Snowflake’s been pushing for years, turns raw data into conversational queries. You ask it a question in plain English, it digests the database, spits out a summary. It makes sense. That’s where enterprise data lives.
But here is the twist. Snowflake isn’t just buying power. They are buying Graviton chips.
Amazon’s homegrown ARM-based processors.
AI used to be just about GPUs for training models. Now, it’s shifting toward automation. Agents. Daily usage. Those tasks burn CPUs. Skyrocketing usage, specifically for the agents that handle the grind behind the scenes.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been vocal. Last month he claimed Amazon’s own chips offer better price-performance than Nvidia’s. AWS still runs Nvidia hardware, of course. Everyone does. Most AI apps are built for the green team. Demand is insatiable.
Still. Cost matters. Amazon passes savings to customers. Cheap chips mean big contracts.
Remember when Meta signed that $10 billion deal with Google? Then AWS snuck in. Signed a deal to pump millions of Graviton chips into Meta’s AI ops. A direct slap at Google’s dominance.
Now Snowflake joins the list.
These moves are signals. To whom?
Nvidia.
The cloud giants aren’t just renting infrastructure anymore. They are building competitive alternatives to Nvidia’s monopoly. Microsoft launched Maia chips in January. Google has been doing it for years.
Jensen Huang says he is ready to fight back.
Last week, the Nvidia chief called his new Vera chip the entry into a “brand new” $200 billion market. He said he’d already sold $20 billion of it. After another record quarter, he looks comfortable.
He won’t give up share easily. No one eats Nvidia for breakfast lightly.
But look at the numbers. AWS is closing six-figure, nine-figure, ten-figure deals by betting on its own silicon. The AI wave isn’t just lifting the boats of the chip makers. It’s lifting the cloud providers too.
The turf is shifting. Slowly, but it’s happening.
