AWS Launches Instances Powered by Custom Graviton5 Chips

Amazon Web Services previewed Graviton5, its fifth-generation custom Arm processor, at re:Invent 2025, continuing its strategy of using vertically integrated chips to reduce cloud-computing costs and improve energy efficiency. As databases, web services and AI inference become more reliant on CPU performance, the new generation of EC2 instances is also central to AWS’s efforts to compete with Intel- and AMD-based platforms on price-performance.

AWS made the general-purpose M9g and M9gd instances available on June 10, 2026, followed by the compute-optimized C9g and C9gd on June 30. Graviton5 delivers up to 25% more compute performance than Graviton4, with web applications and machine-learning inference running up to 35% faster and databases up to 30% faster. The series uses the sixth-generation Nitro System and initially launched in the U.S. East, U.S. West and Frankfurt regions.