Jeff Bezos says that this business is becoming the next ‘pillar’ of Amazon
Amazon’s next flagship could be built on a silicon foundation.
In a new interview no Good luckAmazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos says the company’s custom chip business is poised to be one of Amazon’s longest-lasting businesses, placing it alongside Marketplace, Prime, and Amazon Web Services as the company’s mainstay.
“A few of our offerings have become strong pillars, things like Marketplace and Prime and AWS,” Bezos said. Good luck. “What I see right now is that our chips business, our silicon business, is poised to be our next pillar.”
The comments provide one of Bezos’ clearest recommendations yet for Amazon’s push to design its own artificial intelligence chips, an increasingly important strategy as demand for AI computing rises and companies look for alternatives to dominant Nvidia.
Over ten years of investing
Amazon has invested heavily in custom silicon through Annapurna Labs, an Israeli chip startup it acquired in 2015. The company is now developing its AI chips under the Trainium and Inferentia brands, which are designed to train and run large language models while reducing costs for customers using Amazon Web Services.
AWS has positioned the chips as a low-cost alternative for AI developers. AWS has positioned the chips as a low-cost alternative for AI developers. Anthropic trains and uses its Claude models in Trainium, and OpenAI has committed to use about 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity, increased by 2027.
The company disclosed revenue for its internal data center chips for the first time earlier this year, and since then its Trainium, Graviton, and Nitro chips have grown to average annual revenue of more than $20 billion. Amazon has been pouring billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, including new data centers and custom network hardware.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly argued that demand for AI computing will remain strong for years, making investments in chips, servers, networking equipment, and power generation essential to the company’s long-term growth.
In a statement released earlier this year, Jassy signed off on plans to pour a record $200 billion in capital spending across Amazon by 2026, citing “general opportunities like AI, chips, robots, and low-Earth orbit satellites.”
The real power of Amazon’s chips business may extend beyond the walls of its data centers. Jassy wrote in his annual letter to shareholders this year that it is “likely” Amazon will sell its internally developed chips to third parties in the future.
Amazon’s fourth pillar?
This discussion about Amazon’s “pillars” goes back to Bezos’ 2014 letter to shareholders, in which he described four characteristics of what he called a “dream business”: “Customers love it, it can grow very large, it has a strong return on capital, and it is long-lasting – it has the power to endure for decades.”
AWS, Marketplace, and Prime are considered the first three pillars. The question of what could be Amazon’s “fourth pillar” has been debated for more than a decade, with areas including transportation and logistics and Alexa identified as contenders in the past.
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The company’s big bet on silicon was also emphasized by Jassy on Good luck piece. He told the magazine that chips are often the key to using a computer. “The growth of AI has been very remarkable, but we have a chip business that we’ve built over the last decade here that is growing rapidly,” he said.
The profile appeared sideways For Fortune The release of its 2026 Global 500 ranking, which placed Amazon at No. 1 for the first time, ended Walmart’s 12-year run as the world’s largest company by profit after Amazon surpassed $700 billion in annual sales, as previously reported.
Walmart fell to No. 2, followed by China’s State Grid, UnitedHealth Group, and Saudi Aramco. The magazine reports that Amazon is on the verge of becoming the first billion dollar company in revenue.
Amazon reports Q2 2026 earnings on Thursday afternoon. Check back with GeekWire for availability.
