{"id":801,"date":"2026-09-07T16:12:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/2026\/09\/project-rainier-aws-data-center-sem-nvidia\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T10:49:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:49:31","slug":"project-rainier-aws-data-center-sem-nvidia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/2026\/09\/project-rainier-aws-data-center-sem-nvidia\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Rainier: AWS's AI data center that runs without NVIDIA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Mascote do LinuxPro encaixando chips Trainium no rack do data center AWS Project Rainier, com turbinas e\u00f3licas ao fundo\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/project-rainier-v3.webp\" width=\"1486\" height=\"856\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Video summary:<\/strong> this article is a commented summary \u2014 and <strong>checked<\/strong> \u2014 from the video <em>&#8220;No Nvidia Chips Needed! Amazon&#8217;s New AI Data Center For Anthropic Is Truly Massive&#8221;<\/em>, from the channel <strong>CNBC<\/strong>, published on 29 October 2025.<br \/>\n<strong>Video URL:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vnGC4YS36gU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vnGC4YS36gU<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"video-container\" style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:1.5em 0;\">\n  <iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vnGC4YS36gU\" title=\"No Nvidia Chips Needed! Amazon&#039;s New AI Data Center For Anthropic Is Truly Massive\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">In October 2025 CNBC took its cameras into what would become the largest cluster of <strong>non-NVIDIA<\/strong> AI chips in the world: AWS\u2019s <strong>Project Rainier<\/strong>, in New Carlisle, Indiana. A year earlier it was a cornfield. Today there are seven buildings full of <strong>Trainium2<\/strong> chips designed by Amazon itself, running exclusively for <strong>a single customer<\/strong>: Anthropic, maker of Claude.<\/p>\n<p>The video is good, but it's almost a year old. Besides summarizing what was shown, this post <strong>checks claim by claim<\/strong> \u2014 what was confirmed, what changed, and what has aged poorly since then.<\/p>\n<h2>The site numbers: 1.200 acres, 30 buildings, 2,2 GW<\/h2>\n<p>The land has <strong>1.200 acres<\/strong> (about 486 hectares). In the recording, seven buildings were in full operation; the complete project plans for <strong>30 buildings<\/strong> across three campuses, consuming about <strong>2,2 gigawatts<\/strong> of electricity \u2014 energy equivalent to that of more than 1,5 million homes in the local utility's area. Amazon estimates at least two more years of construction to complete the complex.<\/p>\n<p>The chronology shows the urgency:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>End of 2022<\/strong> \u2014 around the time ChatGPT launched, Amazon begins looking for land. American Electric Power offers New Carlisle due to the abundance of extra-high voltage transmission lines and a robust substation.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Spring of 2023<\/strong> -- first visits to the site.<\/li>\n<li class=\"translation-block\"><strong>2024<\/strong> \u2014 a <strong>US$ 11 billion<\/strong> agreement is formalized: the largest capital investment in Indiana\u2019s history.<\/li>\n<li><strong>September 2024<\/strong> -- start of construction.<\/li>\n<li><strong>October 2025<\/strong> -- seven buildings in full operation. From zero to supercomputer in ~13 months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">None of this came free for the public sector: the county granted <strong>more than US$ 4 billion<\/strong> in property and technology-equipment tax exemptions over 35 years, and a 2019 state law is expected to save another ~US$ 4 billion over 50 years. In return, Indiana cites more than US$ 1 billion in additional GDP and ~9.000 jobs \u2014 all <em>temporary<\/em> construction jobs. The promised permanent positions total <strong>1.000<\/strong>, with at least 600 paying above the county\u2019s average salary.<\/p>\n<h2>Trainium: why AWS removed NVIDIA from the game<\/h2>\n<p>Inside the buildings there is not a single NVIDIA GPU. Two towers form an <em>UltraServer<\/em>, and each UltraServer carries <strong>64 Trainium2 chips<\/strong>. Amazon has been designing silicon since 2013 and the lineage is long:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>2013<\/strong> \u2014 Nitro, the virtualization\/offload chip that powers modern EC2.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2015<\/strong> \u2014 acquisition of the Israeli <strong>Annapurna Labs<\/strong>, the team that came to design everything.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2018<\/strong> \u2014 <strong>Graviton<\/strong>, the company's ARM server processor.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2019<\/strong> \u2014 <strong>Inferentia<\/strong>, the first AI (inference) chip.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2021<\/strong> \u2014 <strong>Trainium1<\/strong>, admitidamente uma &#8220;gera\u00e7\u00e3o de aprendizado&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li><strong>December of 2024<\/strong> \u2014 <strong>Trainium2<\/strong>, the chip that fills the Project Rainier.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The alleged advantage isn't raw performance: it's <strong>cost and availability<\/strong>. O Trainium \u00e9 mais simples e menos potente que uma GPU topo de linha, mas a AWS coloca o dobro deles em cada pr\u00e9dio e mant\u00e9m energia e refrigera\u00e7\u00e3o sob controle. E, como resumiu um analista no v\u00eddeo, n\u00e3o \u00e9 preciso &#8220;esperar na fila para o Jensen te entregar o de que voc\u00ea precisa&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to understand the architectural difference between GPUs and dedicated AI chips, we have two posts that cover exactly that: <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/gpu-vs-tpu-como-funcionam-chips-ia\/\">GPU vs TPU: how AI chips work<\/a> and <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/google-tpus-guia-completo-arquitetura-e-modelos\/\">Google TPUs: architecture, generations, and models<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Anthropic: sole tenant, multi-cloud strategy<\/h2>\n<p>The Project Rainier is dedicated to a single client. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, has used AWS as its primary cloud since Amazon's first major investment, in 2023 \u2014 at the time of the video, about <strong>US$ 8 billion<\/strong>. The two companies co-developed the chip: Anthropic's feedback on what the model needs went into the Trainium3 project.<\/p>\n<p>But Anthropic isn't monogamous. Days before the report it closed with Google the largest TPU contract in its history \u2014 <strong>up to 1 million TPUs<\/strong> e mais de 1 GW de capacidade em 2026. Nas palavras do CPO Mike Krieger, a estrat\u00e9gia multi-chip foi a \u00fanica forma de atender \u00e0 demanda: &#8220;pegamos a capacidade que conseguimos, onde conseguimos&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if Amazon has ever thought about <em>buying<\/em> a Anthropic, o CEO da AWS, Matt Garman, foi direto: &#8220;n\u00e3o. Adoramos a parceria como ela \u00e9&#8221;.<\/p>\n<h2>Energy and water: the bill left for New Carlisle<\/h2>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">New Carlisle has <strong>1.900 residents<\/strong>. It receives about <strong>4.000 workers<\/strong> daily for construction \u2014 and, beside it, an electric car battery plant worth US$ 3,5 billion, from GM in partnership with Samsung. Highways 20 and 2 became dangerous; Amazon is paying US$ 7 million in road improvements (negotiating up to US$ 15 million more) and US$ 114 million for a water treatment plant and sewage system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">The electricity bill is the most sensitive point. Indiana exempts large data centers from the state\u2019s <strong>7% electricity tax<\/strong>. The utility I&amp;M projects that peak demand <strong>more than doubles<\/strong> \u2014 from ~2,8 GW in 2024 to more than 7 GW by 2030 \u2014 and admits that the two data centers it will serve (Amazon and a Google one, worth US$ 2 billion, in Fort Wayne) account for nearly all the electric load it serves today. A survey cited in the report points to monthly bills up to <strong>267% larger<\/strong> in areas near new data centers compared to five years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">The energy mix also weighs heavily: 53% of I&amp;M's power comes from a nearby nuclear plant and 35% from a coal-fired thermal plant scheduled for closure in 2028 \u2014 a timeline the Trump administration signaled it would delay for most coal plants in the country, precisely because of AI. Regarding the <em>net zero<\/em> target in 2040, Garman was honest: \u201cThe path from here to 2040 won't be linear. Will there be a need for gas generation? I think absolutely yes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">As for water, AWS claims to cool the site with <strong>outside air 98% of the year<\/strong>, using water only for the remaining 2%, and reducing consumption by 23% per year with on-site treatment \u2014 but they won't disclose the absolute gallon figure. The municipality is still studying local aquifers to see if they can support both Amazon and GM together.<\/p>\n<h2>What was confirmed (and what changed) since October 2025<\/h2>\n<p>Here's the part the video couldn't have. Each line below was verified against official announcements and subsequent coverage:<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Claim in the video (out\/2025)<\/th>\n<th>Verified status<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>~500 thousand Trainium2 chips running in Indiana<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Confirmed.<\/strong> AWS officially announced the activation of Project Rainier on 29\/10\/2025 with this volume.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>&#8220;Mais de 1 milh\u00e3o de Trainium2 at\u00e9 o fim de 2025&#8221;<\/td>\n<td><strong>Confirmed.<\/strong> The Anthropic fleet exceeded 1 million Trainium2; adding all customers, AWS reported ~1,4 million Trainium chips deployed across three generations.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>1.200 acres, 30 buildings, 2,2 GW<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Confirmed.<\/strong> And there was more: on 24\/11\/2025 AWS announced a second set of campuses of ~US$ 15 billion in northern Indiana (NIPSCO territory), with ~2,4 GW of its own \u2014 bringing AWS's commitment in the state to ~US$ 26 billion and 4,6 GW.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Trainium3 &#8220;ainda este ano&#8221;<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Delivered.<\/strong> Announced with general availability at re:Invent, on 2\/12\/2025: 3 nm from TSMC, 144 GB of HBM3e, ~2,5 PFLOPS FP8 per chip and UltraServers of up to 144 chips \u2014 which deliver up to 4,4x more performance, 4x more energy efficiency and almost 4x more memory bandwidth than Trainium2 UltraServers. It's already being deployed in New Carlisle. The <strong>Trainium4<\/strong> was previewed in the same keynote, with NVIDIA NVLink Fusion support and deliveries expected for 2027 \u2014 irony aside.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Trainium2 com &#8220;30 a 40% melhor custo-benef\u00edcio&#8221; que GPUs<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Partially.<\/strong> Andy Jassy began citing a ~30% advantage over comparable GPUs for Trainium2; the 30\u201340% range became the metric for <em>Trainium3 over Trainium2<\/em>. It is not the same number measuring the same thing.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>US$ 8 billion from Amazon in Anthropic<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Correct at the time, outdated today.<\/strong> On 20\/04\/2026 Amazon invested an additional US$ 5 billion (total of US$ 13 billion) and promised up to US$ 20 billion additional tied to commercial targets. In return, Anthropic committed to spending more than US$ 100 billion on AWS over ten years and reserved up to <strong>5 GW<\/strong> of Trainium capacity.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Anthropic secured up to 1 million TPUs from Google<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Confirmed<\/strong> (23\/10\/2025 announcement), with more than 1 GW coming online in 2026.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Garman: &#8220;n\u00e3o estou descontando os cheques que a OpenAI est\u00e1 emitindo&#8221;<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Aged poorly.<\/strong> On 03\/11\/2025 \u2014 five days after the video aired \u2014 AWS signed a <strong>US$ 38 billion<\/strong> seven-year contract with OpenAI. Then came the expansion, including ~2 GW of Trainium.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>I&amp;M peak demand doubling from 2,8 GW to 7+ GW by 2030<\/td>\n<td><strong>Confirmed<\/strong> in the utility's own projection.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Air cooling 98% of the year<\/td>\n<td class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Confirmed.<\/strong> AWS maintains the number: water only in ~2% of operating hours, about a week per year. The water context also became clearer \u2014 the estimated <em>safe yield<\/em> of the Kankakee aquifer is ~44 million gallons\/day, and the two New Carlisle treatment plants can deliver up to 24 million\/day for all industrial use; Amazon is permitted a fraction of that.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Two relevant things happened <em>after<\/em> and deserve to go on the record:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"translation-block\"><strong>27 January 2026 \u2014 the load cut.<\/strong> During a winter storm, the US Department of Energy ordered the site to cut <strong>50 MW<\/strong> from the grid. Emergency diesel generators came online, but the cold froze pneumatic lines in five of them, compromising emissions control for five hours and releasing pollutants linked to <em>smog<\/em> and acid rain. The case only became public because Amazon needed to report it to Indiana's environmental agency. It's the practical demonstration of what residents feared in the video: the grid is the bottleneck, and the data center is the first load to be cut.<\/li>\n<li class=\"translation-block\"><strong>The chip business turned into real revenue.<\/strong> In 2026 Amazon reported that its custom silicon line exceeded <strong>US$ 20 billion<\/strong> in annualized revenue, with more than <strong>US$ 225 billion<\/strong> in multi-year Trainium commitments \u2014 Anthropic, OpenAI, and clients like Uber. Trainium3 was practically sold out before it even existed in volume.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What this means in practice<\/h2>\n<p>Three takeaways that matter for those working with infrastructure:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. NVIDIA's de facto monopoly in training has real cracks.<\/strong> N\u00e3o porque o Trainium seja melhor \u2014 ele n\u00e3o \u00e9, chip a chip \u2014 mas porque &#8220;bom o suficiente, dispon\u00edvel agora e mais barato&#8221; ganha contratos. Google (TPU), Amazon (Trainium) e agora Anthropic comprando dos dois provam que o mercado quer segunda fonte.<\/p>\n<p class=\"translation-block\"><strong>2. The constraint became energy, not silicon.<\/strong> The entire bottleneck in this report is electrical: transmission lines, substations, electricity tax exemptions, coal plants that do not close, gas generation coming online, a 50 MW cut in a snowstorm. Anyone planning capacity in 2026 sizes megawatts before sizing racks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. The social cost is local and the revenue is global.<\/strong> A city of 1.900 people absorbs traffic, water and risk of <em>brownout<\/em> enquanto o valor gerado \u00e9 contabilizado em Seattle. Como resumiu um dos analistas: &#8220;vai ser uma briga constante para os construtores de data center, porque pela quantidade de terra e recursos que usam, eles n\u00e3o geram tantos empregos assim&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">If you want the background on how Amazon got here, read <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/a-historia-de-jeff-bezos\/\">The story of Jeff Bezos: from the garage to the cloud<\/a>. And if the idea is to run AI on your own instead of renting 2,2 GW from AWS, start with <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/rodando-ia-local-no-linux-com-ollama\/\">Running local AI on Linux with Ollama<\/a> or the <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/servidor-ia-recondicionado-64gb-vram-v100-p100-mi25\/\">refurbished AI server with 64 GB of VRAM<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Video summary: this article is an annotated and fact-checked summary of \u201cNo Nvidia Chips Needed! Amazon\u2019s New AI Data Center For Anthropic Is Truly Massive\u201d from CNBC, published on October 29, 2025. Video URL: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vnGC4YS36gU In October 2025, CNBC brought a camera into what would become \u2026 <a title=\"Project Rainier: AWS&#039;s AI data center that runs without NVIDIA\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/2026\/09\/project-rainier-aws-data-center-sem-nvidia\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Project Rainier: o data center de IA da AWS que roda sem NVIDIA\">Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,21,25],"tags":[188,382,189,383,116,152,381],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ia","category-infra","category-noticias","tag-amazon","tag-anthropic","tag-aws","tag-data-center","tag-ia","tag-nvidia","tag-trainium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}