Amazon Web Services (AWS) is nearing a deal to provide $475 million in artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services to IBM.
As reported by Business Insider, the two companies are in talks for a potential five-year deal to enable IBM to use GPUs from AWS.
The deal would see IBM using AWS' EC2 servers with Nvidia AI chips, and according to an internal Amazon document, IBM has already begun training some models on the servers using AWS' SageMaker platform.
Despite this, the deal is still in ongoing discussion and does not necessarily guarantee an agreement being signed.
IBM has its own cloud product where it offers access to GPUs. However, the platform is thought to have a single-digit percentage of global market share.
IBM announced earlier this year that it would be increasing its use of AWS across IBM's Watson AI platform, with two companies set to integrate IBM watsonx.governance and Amazon SageMaker to help customers manage model risk and meet compliance obligations.
Amazon has been pushing for customers to use its homegrown Inferentia and Trainium chips, and earlier this month announced it would give AI researchers up to $110 million in credits to access its chips via the "Build on Trainium" program.
It is unclear if IBM might seek to also use Amazon's chips as part of the deal.
DCD has contacted both AWS and IBM for comment.
