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A2 u.s. news
Wednesday 4 March 2026

Texas at heart of Amazon’s AI push in The Wisdom of the Waves:

United States Older Male Humpbacks Take

the Lead in the Mating Game
Unlike other major play-
ers in AI processors, AWS
doesn’t sell its chips.

Instead, AWS uses Trainium
exclusively in its own data
centers, leasing computing
capabilities to customers.
AWS opted to customize its
chips to harmonize them
with its software, particular-
ly a Bedrock platform that
lets customers chose from
a wide range of compet-
ing AI models including An- A humpback whale leaps in the waters of the Pacific Ocean
Wiring inside the compute sled of a Trainium 2 system is seen at thropic, OpenAI and other at Bahia Malaga Natural Park, Colombia, on August 29, 2025.
Annapurna Labs in Austin, Texas, on February 3, 2026. rivals, according to the lab.
Austin, United States for powering AI models. In a beautiful testament to A Growing, Selective Com-
Tech titan Amazon is work- The first Trainium debuted in Trainium is positioned as a the power of experience, munity
ing to step out of Nvidia’s 2020, followed by a second cost-saving option in an AI new research has revealed The study, which analyzed
shadow with custom generation that touted a market considered “supply that for humpback whales, nearly 20 years of data from
“Trainium” chips designed big boost in performance. constrained” because of age is much more than just the waters of New Caledo-
specially for machine learn- Trainium 3 chips put into insatiable appetite for high- a number—it is a competi- nia, highlights a fascinating
ing as billions of dollars are action in December are performance GPUs from tive edge. A groundbreak- shift in whale society:
poured into artificial intel- touted as doubling the industry leader Nvidia and ing study published in Cur- Selective Females: As popula-
ligence (AI). capabilities of the second competitors such as AMD. rent Biology on February 27, tions rebound, female whales
Amazon subsidiary An- generation despite being Even though Trainium 3 2026, shows that as hump- have become more discern-
napurna Labs in Austin, Tex- smaller than a credit card. is only a few months old, back populations continue ing. They increasingly favor
as, was testing the longev- Kristopher King, head of the Annapurna is already de- their inspiring recovery from males with the strongest per-
ity of its latest generation Annapurna lab in Austin, signing a new generation the brink of extinction, older formances and most com-
Trainium during a recent contended that the latest of the chip. male whales are becoming plex displays, which usually
visit by AFP to the facility. Trainium chips can cut the A launch date for Trainium the most successful “suitors” belong to the more mature
Texas is emerging as a US cost of developing and run- 4 has yet to be disclosed, in the ocean. bulls.
tech world El Dorado, luring ning generative AI models but Carroll says it will have Shift in Paternity: In the early
investments with cheap en- by as much as 40 percent six times the processing The Art of the Song years of recovery, the pop-
ergy, relaxed regulations, compared to using graph- performance of its prede- For decades, scientists have ulation was dominated by
tax incentives and reason- ics processing units (GPUs) cessor. been captivated by the younger males. Now, with
ably affordable real estate that are now deemed the complex, haunting melo- a more balanced age dis-
for massive data centers. “gold standard” for AI. As Google, Microsoft, Ope- dies of male humpbacks. tribution, older individuals
Amidst a deafening roar, nAI, Meta and other tech It turns out these songs are are more likely to father
UltraServers packed with - Failure not an option - rivals race to field ever-im- not just innate; they are a calves than ever before.
144 of the Trainium AI-ac- Along with pricing Trainium proved AI models, pressure refined art form. Research- Strategic Success: Beyond
celerator chips were being chips competitively, AWS is intense for chips to make ers from the University of St singing, older males are
put through their paces at is out to make reliability the technology smarter, Andrews found that older more adept at “escorting”—
Annapurna in a routine a selling point since data faster, cheaper and less males—those roughly 16 a behavior where they swim
check prior to delivery. centers need to operate power-hungry. years and older—have mas- closely with a female to pro-
After years of relying on non-stop for long stretches Nvidia began manufac- tered the “gentle croon” and tect their chance to mate.
suppliers for chips, the e- at a time. turing its industry-leading intricate structures of their
commerce powerhouse’s AI development requires Rubin grapics processing mating calls. A Legacy of Resilience
Amazon Web Services hundreds of thousands of unit less than a year after This mastery gives them a sig- This shift is a direct result of the
(AWS) cloud computing chips operating simultane- the release of then top-of- nificant advantage over their global ban on commercial
unit began designing its ously for weeks, according the-line Blackwell. younger, less experienced ri- whaling. “It is only now, as
own, acquiring Israeli start- to Annapurna head of en- The first version of Trainium vals. While younger whales whale populations recover...
up Annapurna Labs in 2015. gineering Mark Carroll. took about 18 months to may have the energy, the that we are beginning to un-
“If there’s a failure or un- create, while the second veterans have the technique, derstand how far-reaching
First came Graviton and In- availability during this generation was readied in allowing them to better refine the consequences of whal-
ferentia chips in 2018, the phase you have to go nine months and Annapur- their singing and competitive ing truly are,” says Dr. Franca
former for general cloud back, or even start from na is “trying to maintain tactics to attract mates. Eichenberger, lead author of
computing and the latter scratch,” Carroll said. that pace”, Carroll said.q the study.q