(Amazon AWS)

Amazon rolls out updated Trainium chip, new AI models at re:Invent conference

A flurry of product announcements from the developer conference in Las Vegas present a road map for Amazon’s AI computing dominance.

Jon Keegan

12/2/25 3:04PM

Today in Las Vegas, at its annual re:Invent developer conference, Amazon AWS made a bunch of product announcements that reveal its plan to continue capitalizing on the AI boom.

AWS currently enjoys a substantial lead in the cloud computing market, serving up AI infrastructure in the cloud to customers large and small using the models of their choice.

Trainium3

Probably the most consequential announcement was about the company’s new Trainium3 custom AI chip. Three years out from ChatGPT’s disruptive debut, AI companies are diversifying their computing resources away from GPU juggernaut Nvidia and starting to sample the price and performance benefits of alternative custom chips, such as Trainium.

Today, AWS announced the Trainium3 UltraServer, powered by the new Trainium3 chips. The company said the Trainium3 chips are 4x as fast and can train models for half the cost of the previous generation. AWS CEO Matt Garman acknowledged the misleading name of the chip, which excels not only at training AI models but also running AI models, known as inference.

“People often give us a little bit of a hard time about product naming in AWS. No, no, it’s true. Well, it turns out Trainium is no exception. We named it Trainium because it’s designed to be an awesome chip for Al training, and it is, but as it turns out, Trainium2 is actually the best system in the world currently for inference,” Garman said.

The company said work on Trainium4 is well underway, and the chips would be compatible with Nvidia systems.

Nova 2 models

Amazon announced updates to its own frontier AI model family called Nova:

Nova Lite (fast and cheap for everyday tasks),
Nova Pro (for complex reasoning workloads),
Nova Sonic (a new speech-to-speech model), and
Nova Omni (an “all-in-one model for multimodal reasoning and image generation”).

The new models may help the company offer cheaper, more efficient AI computing for its customers versus running competing frontier models on popular Nvidia GPUs.

Nova Forge

Complementing the new Nova 2 models is a product called “Nova Forge,” which makes it easier to train customized models using the Nova models as a base. Customers can bring custom data into the training process to easily create specialized expert models using the tool.

AI Factories

Amazon is also rolling out a way for customers to run AWS services inside their own data centers, keeping their data under their control. Amazon AI Factories works with both Amazon Trainium chips as well as Nvidia GPUs. Amazon said an AI factory is like deploying your own private AWS region.

Agents, agents, agents

AI agents were mentioned quite a bit during the keynote, and the company had lots of new offerings to help customers deploy autonomous AI helpers.

Nova Act: A new AWS service that lets customers spin up “fleets of reliable AI agents for automating production UI workflows.”

DevOps Agent: A new “frontier agent” that autonomously helps solve software failures on production systems when human engineers aren’t online. Amazon describes the new agent as “our always-on, autonomous on-call engineer.”

Rani Molla3m

Fortnite returning to the Play Store worldwide after Google lowers fees and opens Android

After years of fighting with Fortnite maker Epic Games, Google is hitting reset on Android — cutting Play Store fees, loosening its grip on billing, and making it easier for rival app stores to set up shop on millions of devices.

The move could also dent one of Google’s lucrative businesses: Play Store commissions.

In a blog post Tuesday, Google said it will let developers use their own billing systems alongside Google Play’s, link out to external purchase pages, and distribute apps through third-party app stores that meet Google’s safety standards. The company is also lowering Play fees in key markets, with billing fees around 5% for developers that use Google’s system, service fees roughly 20% on new installs, and subscription fees around 10%. The changes will roll out on a staggered schedule, beginning mid-2026.

In a corresponding post, Epic said Fortnite would expand worldwide on Google Play. “These changes will evolve Android into a true open platform,” the company wrote. Fortnite returned to the Play Store in the US in December after the two companies reached a settlement following years of antitrust battles.

Google’s Changes Will Open Android Devices to Competition

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Apple debuts $599 Google Chromebook competitor

Apple’s latest product announcement this week is an opening salvo against Google’s ubiquitous Chromebook. On Wednesday, the iPhone maker unveiled the MacBook Neo, which starts at $599 — or $499 for students — the lowest price ever for a MacBook. Apple typically skews to the high end of the market.

The Neo is still more expensive than typical Chromebooks, which are hugely popular in schools, but it’s less stripped down, with a sharper display, aluminum case, and a more powerful processor than many Chromebook models.

Say hello to MacBook Neo

Rani Molla

Musk says Tesla will be one of first companies to reach AGI

He also said we’d reach artificial general intelligence within two years... about two years ago.

Elon Musk Speaks During A town Hall Event In Green Bay, Wisconsin

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Bank of America upgrades Tesla, expecting it to “quickly become a leader in robotaxi services”

Tesla jumped in premarket trading after Bank of America reinstated coverage of the EV maker and upgraded it to “buy” from “hold,” with a price target of $460.

“We expect TSLA to quickly become a leader in robotaxi services, given its ability to scale more profitably than competitors,” analyst Alexander Perry wrote, noting that Tesla’s approach eschews more expensive (but more robust) technology like lidar.

BofA says Tesla’s Robotaxi service could amount to $844 billion in equity value and more than half Tesla’s valuation.

Currently, Robotaxi operates in two markets with heavy human oversight. In Austin, most of the rides involve a safety monitor sitting in the front seat, and in the Bay Area, all rides are driven by a human using supervised Full Self-Driving tech.

Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, meanwhile, is currently operating its driverless ride-hailing service in 10 US markets.

Rani Molla22h

Waymos reportedly continuing to pass stopped school buses after earlier recall over same issue

The National Transportation Safety Board reported Tuesday that it’s looking into two recent instances of driverless Waymo vehicles passing stopped school buses. The incidents occurred after the Alphabet subsidiary filed a voluntary recall in December over similar behavior.

In the January 12 case, the NTSB says video evidence shows the Waymo vehicle initially stopped for a school bus that had its red lights flashing and stop arms extended. Three human-driven vehicles then passed the bus illegally. While stopped, the Waymo vehicle contacted a remote assistance agent located in Michigan, asking whether the bus had active signals. After the agent responded “no,” the vehicle resumed travel and passed the bus while its stop arms were still extended. No one was hurt.