Amazon Web Services is extending its physical infrastructure deeper into the Pacific with a new 420 Tbps subsea cable linking Japan and Washington state. The Sta’O’Nuk system, planned for service in 2029, will use 20 fiber pairs and add another high-capacity path to the network carrying cloud and AI workloads across the Pacific. AWS positions the system for bandwidth-intensive applications including distributed large language model training, financial transactions, edge computing and video streaming. The project arrives as hyperscalers increasingly treat long-haul connectivity as a core component of the infrastructure required to distribute compute across regions.

AWS Adds Washington to Its Trans-Pacific Network

The most significant element of Sta’O’Nuk is not simply its capacity, but where AWS plans to bring that capacity ashore. Washington will provide AWS with a new US landing point outside the established California and Oregon corridors that carry much of the existing trans-Pacific traffic. AWS says more than 30 trans-Pacific subsea cables currently operate between North America and Japan, with many landing along those established coastal corridors. A separate landing location gives AWS another physical path into the Pacific Northwest and reduces concentration around existing gateways.

The Washington landing station is taking shape in Ocean Shores through Toptana Technologies, an Indigenous-owned telecommunications infrastructure company established by the Quinault Indian Nation. The facility will initially accommodate up to four subsea cable systems and can expand to as many as 16 cable vaults, creating infrastructure that can support networks beyond Sta’O’Nuk. Toptana plans terrestrial backhaul along the Interstate 5 corridor toward Seattle and Hillsboro, Oregon, connecting the coastal landing point with two major Pacific Northwest data center and network markets. Meanwhile, Assured Communications is serving as Toptana’s strategic partner, program manager and operations service provider.

AI Turns Network Routes Into Compute Infrastructure

The economics of AI infrastructure increasingly extend beyond GPUs, servers and power capacity. Distributed training and latency-sensitive cloud services require high-capacity links between geographically separated compute environments, making subsea systems part of the architecture supporting those workloads. Jimmy Yu, vice president at Dell’Oro Group, described hyperscalers as major subsea customers even before the latest AI investment cycle.

“Even before the rise of AI investments, hyperscalers were among the primary consumers of subsea cables and capacity,” said Jimmy Yu, vice president at Dell’Oro Group. “The surge in AI demand should further drive demand for both terrestrial and submarine networks,” he said. Washington therefore matters as a network architecture decision rather than simply a geographic choice. A new coastal gateway can give AWS greater control over how international capacity reaches inland compute markets, reducing dependence on a small number of established landing corridors. The value of 420 Tbps depends on that end-to-end path because international capacity must move efficiently from the shoreline into terrestrial fiber and data center interconnection ecosystems.

Security and Physical Resilience Shape the Design

AWS is designing Sta’O’Nuk around multiple layers of network protection, including quantum-safe optical encryption at Layer 1, MACsec at Layer 2 and TLS, SSL or QUIC at Layer 4. The company plans armored cable deployment and burial through vulnerable sections, with some portions reaching depths of up to 1,500 meters. Near landing areas, horizontal directional drilling will place cable beneath beaches, dunes and shallow seabeds to reduce exposure to physical disruption. However, these measures address a broader reliability problem: AWS estimates that roughly 200 subsea cable cuts occur globally each year, with fishing activity and dragged anchors among the principal causes.

The landing station itself represents another layer of resilience. Toptana describes the Ocean Shores facility as the first new cable landing station developed in Washington in more than 25 years, giving the state a new role in international telecommunications infrastructure. The Quinault Indian Nation owns Toptana and granted AWS permission to use Sta’O’Nuk, a Quinault-language name meaning “lightning serpent.” Assured Communications will support planning, construction and long-term operations for the landing facility.

AWS Expands Control of the Physical Cloud

Sta’O’Nuk will join the AWS Global Network, which AWS says spans more than 20 million kilometers of fiber across 39 Regions, 124 Availability Zones, 46 Local Zones and more than 750 Points of Presence. The new cable extends that network strategy into infrastructure AWS can directly shape across the ocean, on the coast and through terrestrial backhaul. The Japanese landing location will provide geographic diversity relative to traditional cable corridors, although AWS has not publicly disclosed detailed landing-site information. The combination of a new trans-Pacific route, Washington landing infrastructure and inland fiber creates a physical network designed around the growing geographic distribution of cloud and AI compute. For Washington, Sta’O’Nuk marks a return to the trans-Pacific subsea map after a long gap. The state’s previous two subsea cable landings, Pacific Crossing-1 at Harbour Pointe and Alaska United East, date to 1999. AWS now plans to put Washington at the center of a new international route built for an era in which compute capacity, network capacity and resilience increasingly have to scale together.