AWS Pledges Up to $50 Billion for U.S. Government AI Cloud as Russian Executive Calls AI a 'New Nuclear Club'

Overview

• Amazon said it will invest up to $50 billion starting in 2026 to expand AI and supercomputing for U.S. government customers, adding roughly 1.3 gigawatts in AWS Top Secret, Secret and GovCloud regions.
• AWS said more than 11,000 federal agencies will gain expanded access to services such as SageMaker and Bedrock, as well as foundation models including Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude.
• At Russia’s AI Journey event, Sberbank first deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin likened AI to a nuclear‑level strategic technology and argued countries need national large language models for sensitive uses.
• Vedyakhin said the U.S. and China lead by about six to nine months, warned new entrants face prohibitive costs, and claimed Sberbank’s GigaChat 2 MAX is comparable to ChatGPT‑4.0 with an Ultra Preview positioned against ChatGPT‑5.0.
• Industry voices flagged energy consumption and capital intensity as risks to returns, with tech CEOs discussing a possible AI bubble and commentators outlining an intensifying U.S.–China race with uncertain timelines to general AI.