Forget Apple. Amazon just made AI a lot more expensive. (www.businessinsider.com)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a significant price increase for its EC2 Capacity Blocks for machine learning, with hourly rental rates for certain cloud servers rising by approximately 20% beginning in July. This follows a previous 15% increase earlier this year and reflects ongoing supply chain pressures, particularly stemming from memory chip shortages. The adjustments highlight a troubling trend in the tech industry, where major players like Apple and Xbox are also raising prices in response to skyrocketing memory costs. The implications of AWS's price hike are profound for the AI/ML community. As the world's largest cloud provider, AWS serves as a backbone for many applications and services utilized by developers globally. With high-bandwidth memory shortages constraining GPU supply, the increased costs for cloud services may hinder data center expansions and access to AI resources. Experts suggest that these dynamics grant cloud providers enhanced pricing power, as users have limited alternatives when capacity is tight. As a result, the tech landscape may be shifting, with more significant financial barriers arising in AI development driven by physical supply constraints rather than just software advancements.