Apple Scratches Amazon’s Back

Here’s news we didn’t expect: Apple is endorsing Amazon’s cloud service. That’s what happened on Tuesday at Amazon Web Service’s annual conference, re:Invent, when an Apple artificial intelligence executive, Benoit Dupin, took the stage to talk up AWS—and to mention that Apple is using AWS’ custom-made chips for search and testing its AI chips. That’s quite the marketing coup for AWS. 

Whether it amounts to anything more than good publicity is hard to say. Apple hasn’t yet committed to using Amazon’s AI chips for Apple Intelligence and other AI products, which is what matters. (For now, therefore, Nvidia’s dominance of AI chips looks safe.) What Apple’s appearance at the Amazon event perhaps demonstrates more is the continuing prevalence of you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours dealings between big tech companies.