Meta Platforms inked a multibillion-dollar agreement with Amazon to deploy tens of millions of AWS Graviton processor cores in support of its next-generation AI buildout. The deal makes Meta one of the largest Graviton customers globally and shows CEO Mark Zuckerberg's willingness to spend aggressively on compute infrastructure as the AI arms race intensifies with Alphabet, Microsoft, and other tech giants.
The news that the social media giant would deploy hundreds of thousands of Amazon's general-purpose chips to "support the company's AI efforts" was first reported by Amazon News.
"The chips will power various workloads at Meta, including supporting the company's AI efforts. That work requires infrastructure that can handle billions of interactions while coordinating complex, multi-step agent workflows—exactly the kind of CPU-intensive work Graviton is designed for," the release stated.
The deal also expands Meta's long-running AWS partnership and builds on its large-scale use of Amazon Bedrock. While GPUs remain essential for training large AI models, Amazon noted in the release that the "rise of agentic AI is creating massive demand for CPU-intensive workloads."
The press release did not reveal the value of the Meta-Amazon deal on expanding compute. But in recent weeks, Zuckerberg has signed deals totaling $48 billion with CoreWeave and Nebius, both of which rent out access to Nvidia GPUs that run AI models.
To expand computing capacity, Meta has announced a workforce restructuring, with its latest plan calling for layoffs of around 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce. Microsoft has done the same (read report).
"Meta has, as you can imagine, access to so many options from the supply side. But they chose Graviton5, our 3-nanometer chip, for price performance," Nafea Bshara, an Amazon vice president and distinguished engineer, said, who was quoted by The Wall Street Journal. He said the length of the deal is between three and five years.
Meta shares are marginally higher in premarket trading, while Amazon trades up nearly 2% following the news.