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Amazon Acquired Annapurna Labs in 2015: What the Reported $350 Million Deal Means

Amazon acquired Annapurna Labs in 2015. The $350 million price was reported in contemporaneous coverage, while the team’s better-documented legacy is AWS custom silicon.
From TheFinanceBase Team2 min to read
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Amazon acquired chip designer Annapurna Labs in 2015, but the often-cited $350 million purchase price is a contemporaneous press report, not a deal value confirmed in the official Amazon and SEC passages reviewed here. The acquisition’s better-documented significance is what followed: Annapurna’s team helped develop AWS infrastructure chips and systems, including Nitro, Graviton, Inferentia and Trainium.

Did Amazon buy Annapurna Labs?

Yes. Amazon acquired Annapurna Labs in 2015. AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr later wrote that Amazon acquired the company after working with its team on the first version of the AWS Nitro System. Amazon has described Annapurna as a specialist microelectronics company and connected its team to the development of custom silicon for AWS.

The acquisition was therefore a purchase of a chip-design business and its capabilities, not a launch of a consumer chip brand. The products associated with the team are used in AWS infrastructure.

Was the purchase price really $350 million?

Contemporaneous technology coverage reported a price of $350 million. Treat that as a reported figure, not an officially disclosed or independently confirmed deal value: the Amazon and SEC passages available for this history do not state an Annapurna-specific price.

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Amazon’s 2015 Form 10-K reported an aggregate purchase price of $690 million for certain companies acquired that year. The cited disclosure does not name Annapurna or break out its price, so it cannot verify that the company accounted for $350 million of the total.

What did Annapurna’s team build for AWS?

The company’s technical legacy is best understood by workload. Amazon describes the team as working on Nitro, then Graviton, followed by machine-learning chips including Inferentia and Trainium. These are AWS systems and processors, not retail products for individual computer owners.

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Technology Role described by Amazon or AWS
Nitro System Supports AWS networking, storage and security.
Graviton Arm-based processors for general cloud computing.
Inferentia Machine-learning inference.
Trainium AI training and inference.

Nitro came before the acquisition

AWS’s account places the relationship before the 2015 purchase: Barr said Amazon acquired Annapurna after working with its team on the first version of Nitro. AWS’s 2018 announcement introducing A1 EC2 instances and Graviton provides later context for the cloud-chip effort, but it does not establish the deal price.

Graviton and machine-learning chips broadened the work

Amazon’s retrospective describes the team moving on to Graviton and then to Inferentia and Trainium. The lines address different computing workloads; their connection is AWS’s use of custom silicon in its cloud infrastructure, rather than a common consumer-chip market.

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What does Amazon’s chip business look like now?

In a 2026 company article, Amazon said its custom-chip business had recently exceeded a $25 billion annual revenue run rate. That is Amazon’s own company-reported figure, not an independently verified measure of Annapurna Labs’ standalone revenue or the financial return on its acquisition. It also does not isolate the contribution of any one chip family.

The figure offers a sense of the scale Amazon attributes to its custom-chip business, but it should not be compared directly with the reported $350 million purchase price as if the two measured the same thing. One is a company-reported revenue run rate for a broader business; the other is a reported acquisition price.

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  • Alexa is happy to help – Ask Alexa for weather updates and to set hands-free timers, get answers to your questions and even hear jokes. Need a few extra minutes in the morning? Just tap your Echo Dot to snooze your alarm.
  • Keep your home comfortable – Control compatible smart home devices with your voice and routines triggered by built-in motion or indoor temperature sensors. Create routines to automatically turn on lights when you walk into a room, or start a fan if the inside temperature goes above your comfort zone.
  • Do more with device pairing – Fill your home with music using compatible Echo devices in different rooms, or create a home theatre system with Fire TV.
  • Say goodbye to drop-offs and buffering - With eero Built-in, Echo Dot doubles as a mesh wifi extender, adding up to 1,000 sq. ft. of wifi coverage to your existing eero network.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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