TNB Tech Minute: Amazon Announces New Supercomputer for AI Development
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Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Tuesday, December 3rd. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. We exclusively report that Amazon's cloud computing arm says it's planning to build a massive supercomputer dedicated to artificial intelligence development. The so-called UltraCluster will be made up of hundreds of thousands of Amazon Web Services Tranium chips, as well as a new server. The supercomputer is expected to be completed next year and will be one of the largest in the world for training AI models.

It will be used by AI startup Anthropic, in which Amazon has invested billions of dollars. Microsoft is facing a $1.27 billion antitrust lawsuit in the United Kingdom over how it charges customers who buy rival cloud software services. The lawsuit filed with the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal alleges that Microsoft is unfairly charging businesses more if they buy a Windows server but use it with other cloud platforms, like Google or Amazon. Microsoft declined to comment.

Meanwhile, China is retaliating against the latest U.S. trade restrictions on chips by limiting exports of key raw materials. Citing national security concerns, China's Ministry of Commerce said it would in principle ban the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and certain other extremely hard materials to the U.S. The ministry also said it would conduct stricter reviews of the export of graphite and ban the export of dual-use items intended for U.S. military purposes.

And Tesla's sales in China fell in November amid intensifying competition from rivals like BYD. Data from the China Passenger Car Association found Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker sold almost 79,000 China-made cars in November, down 4.3% compared with the year before, but 15% higher than in October. The group says EV sales have been robust thanks to government trade-in subsidies, promotional events, and a recent auto show.

For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Wednesday's Tech News Briefing podcast. What does the AI-powered future hold for the enterprise? And how can marketers catch the wave of the sea change to come? Find out on the debut episode of AI That Means Business, a new podcast from Google Cloud and custom content from WSJ.