Shares of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) rose around 2% on Friday after Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) unveiled a major expansion of its partnership with Amazon Web Services, centered on deploying tens of millions of AWS Graviton processor cores for advanced AI workloads.
Meta Scales Up AI Infrastructure
Meta said it will become one of the largest global users of Graviton chips, with initial deployment involving tens of millions of cores. The move builds on its existing AWS relationship as the company broadens its computing infrastructure to support agentic AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and executing complex tasks autonomously.
Graviton5 processors are designed to deliver faster data throughput and higher bandwidth, features Meta highlighted as essential for large-scale AI systems that continuously process and act on information.
Focus on Agentic AI Systems
“This isn’t just about chips; it’s about giving customers the infrastructure foundation, as well as data and inference services, to build AI that understands, anticipates, and scales efficiently to billions of people worldwide,” said Nafea Bshara. “Meta’s expanded partnership, deploying tens of millions of Graviton cores, shows what happens when you combine purpose-built silicon with the full AWS AI stack to power the next generation of agentic AI.”
Meta’s Head of Infrastructure Santosh Janardhan added: “AWS has been a trusted cloud partner for years, and expanding to Graviton allows us to run the CPU-intensive workloads behind agentic AI with the performance and efficiency we need at our scale.”
CPUs Take Center Stage in Next AI Phase
Amazon also highlighted the growing importance of CPUs in agentic AI systems, which differ from traditional large language models by acting more like autonomous managers capable of handling multi-step processes rather than simply responding to prompts.
These systems require sustained computing power and rapid communication between processing units, making CPUs critical for tasks such as logic execution, file handling, networking and code processing.
Graviton chips are designed to minimise latency and improve communication efficiency across cores—key requirements for AI systems that continuously exchange data during reasoning workflows.
Analyst View: Opportunity in Custom Silicon
Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge said improving sentiment around Amazon in recent months has been partly driven by growing recognition of its custom silicon strategy.
“The Graviton commentary is important/interesting in two respects: 1) Amazon emphasizes how critical the CPU (a market historically dominated by INTC and AMD) is becoming for the next phase of AI, one dominated by agents (GPUs were key for LLMs, but CPUs are vital for agents, which is why INTC is performing so well); and 2) Amazon notes that Meta is utilizing Graviton, underscoring the substantial opportunity for Amazon’s custom silicon,” wrote Crisafulli.