Amazon is reportedly developing a new large language model, code named ‘Olympus,’ which is expected to surpass competitors with a staggering 2 trillion parameters—twice that of OpenAI´s leading GPT-4. Sources suggest an official announcement could come as soon as December, underscoring Amazon’s urgency in staking its claim in the rapidly expanding Artificial Intelligence market. With Artificial Intelligence adoption intensifying across industries such as marketing, payments, and insurance, the company sees speed and innovation as critical to commercial success.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has projected that generative Artificial Intelligence stands to generate ´tens of billions in revenues´ for the tech giant. While Amazon already offers proprietary models such as Titan and resells those from startups like Anthropic—where it holds a significant minority stake—the scale and ambition of Olympus represent a strategic move to own key intellectual property and reduce reliance on third-party models or APIs. The project, reportedly led by Rohit Prasad, former Alexa chief and head scientist for artificial general intelligence at Amazon, may also be linked to next-generation voice and device integration across the company´s ecosystem.
The push for Olympus comes amid broader efforts by Big Tech players to commercialize Artificial Intelligence and retain control of foundational technology. Google, for instance, is advancing its own PaLM model while also investing in Anthropic. Meanwhile, marketplace competition is sharpening as incumbents like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta secure prime market positions and as smaller ventures, like Aleph Alpha in Europe, emphasize concepts such as data sovereignty to attract funding. Olympus, if successfully developed and deployed, could help Amazon capture more enterprise business by offering cutting-edge, natively built Artificial Intelligence solutions that meet client demands for security, scalability, and seamless integration—rather than simply brokering outside technologies.
As enterprise customers call for accurate, relevant Artificial Intelligence output in business workflows and as consumers increasingly rely on Artificial Intelligence-enabled technologies in daily life, Amazon’s investment signals both the soaring costs and the high commercial stakes of this new technological frontier. With the race for Artificial Intelligence leadership intensifying, Olympus could be pivotal in reshaping Amazon’s competitive standing among global tech giants.