Nvidia employee gives update on Capital One, claims bank is concerned about rising AI costs with Amazon Web Services as it looks to control expenses

The US credit card giant Capital One may be exploring alternatives to Amazon Web Services due to rising AI infrastructure costs, Business Insider has reported, citing an internal Nvidia document. The revelation highlights growing tensions between cloud spending and AI adoption among major enterprises.An Nvidia employee wrote in an internal memo that the chip giant discussed AI infrastructure alternatives with Capital One representatives at a recent tech conference. "They see their need for GPUs and reasoning models growing and the costs in AWS will soon get out of hand," the employee stated, referring to the bank's concerns about controlling expenses. The discussions centered on "AI factory and neo-clouds" as potential solutions, Business Insider reported. An AI factory refers to an in-house data center companies can build to train and run AI models independently, rather than renting compute power from third-party providers. Neoclouds are emerging cloud providers like CoreWeave, Lambda, and Crusoe that specialize in AI workloads using Nvidia hardware.Capital One responded by reaffirming its commitment to AWS. "We continue to be committed to AWS as our predominant strategic cloud partner," a spokesperson told Business Insider. However, the bank's exploration of alternatives reflects broader industry trends, with 43% of companies now using multiple public cloud providers, according to RBC Capital.AWS reached out to The Times of India with a comment on the matter. "Our pricing philosophy is to work relentlessly to take cost out of our own cost structure and to pass those savings back to our AWS customers in the form of lower prices. It's easy to lower prices, it's much harder to be able to afford to lower prices, and at AWS we work really hard at that," an AWS spokesperson told TOI-Tech. The concerns aren't isolated to Capital One. Business Insider previously reported that AI startups are increasingly delaying AWS spending in favor of competitor platforms, with internal Amazon documents showing 90% of Radical Ventures portfolio startups building primarily on rival clouds due to cost concerns.This development is particularly notable given Capital One's deep AWS relationship. The bank became the first major financial institution to move entirely to public cloud, shutting down all data centers over two years, CIO.com reported in July. Capital One's AI chief Prem Natarajan has previously emphasized that inference costs have dropped dramatically, but the bank's exploration of alternatives suggests overall AI infrastructure expenses remain a significant concern.