Pinterest and AWS Sign $4 Billion Deal to Power Visual Search | PYMNTS.com

According to a Thursday (June 4) press release from Amazon, the deal extends a relationship between the two companies dating back to 2010.

The scale of the commitment reflects how central AI has become to Pinterest’s core business. Per the release, Pinterest serves more than 600 million monthly users whose primary activity is search and discovery. When search results get worse, users disengage. When users disengage, advertisers pull back.

Pinterest has moved its recommendation systems away from basic keyword and category matching toward artificial intelligence (AI) models that understand visual context and user intent. That shift requires significantly more computing power to train and run at scale.

To handle that demand, Pinterest said it plans to use AWS Trainium, Amazon’s custom chip…