Amazon is advancing its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts by establishing a new division within its cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), dedicated to developing software that collaborates with AI agents. This move aims to keep Amazon competitive in the rapidly evolving generative AI sector. Swami Sivasubramanian, a vice president with nearly two decades at Amazon, shared this development in a LinkedIn post.
Sivasubramanian emphasized the transformative potential of AI agent systems, which go beyond current chatbots to enhance efficiency in unprecedented ways. These systems will manage complex workflows and solve problems with human-like reasoning, optimizing performance and cost-effectiveness on a large scale.
In an internal memo, AWS CEO Matt Garman highlighted the multibillion-dollar potential of AI agents for AWS. Customers are already adopting agent software through AWS, and Amazon itself is a significant user. For instance, Amazon's programmers are now utilizing AWS's Q developer service to write or update source code. Sivasubramanian noted that by employing Amazon Q developer's code conversion feature, Amazon has saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer work years in upgrading Java applications.
Amazon's competitors are also advancing in AI. Last November, Microsoft announced Azure AI agent services, and shortly after, OpenAI, supported by Microsoft, began allowing paid users to test its Operator agent software. In December, Google offered limited access to its Agentspace tool to select customers.
Amazon holds a leading position in the cloud infrastructure market, with AWS generating nearly $29 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, significantly outpacing Microsoft and Google. Furthermore, Amazon is promoting the next-generation version of its Alexa voice assistant, which will leverage AI models from AWS and Amazon-backed AI company Anthropic. Recent reports suggested that Anthropic is working on advanced components for the new Alexa, although an Amazon spokesperson denied this claim.
