AWS CEO: No need for massive shifts - but AI could still bring changes

The CEO of Amazon Web Services has promised some big advances coming soon, despite the company being in a fairly relaxed situation.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Matt Garman outlined how AWS' strong position in the market actually afforded it the luxury of being able to be consistent and not make any rash changes.

“Not a ton has changed in the organization," he noted, "the business is doing quite well, so there’s no need to do a massive shift on anything that we’re focused on."

AWS focus

Garman, who took over leadership at AWS in May 2024 following the surprise resignation of Adam Selipsky, has remained somewhat out of the limelight in recent months, in comparison to other tech CEOs such as Nvidia's Jensen Huang and OpenAI's Sam Altman.

He noted that there was a desire within AWS not to lose focus on the company's core user base of developers and startups, suggesting there could be a raft of new product and service launches to come soon.

“I’ve been really emphasizing with the team just how important it is for us to continue to not rest on the lead we have with regards to the set of services and capabilities and features and functions that we have today — and continue to lean forward and building that roadmap of real innovation,” he said.

With AI taking center stage for many companies, Garman also emphasized the importance of the technology at the company.

AI was a key theme at the company's ReInvent 2023 event in December 2023, where is announced (among other things) Amazon Q, a generative-AI assistant for businesses, and multiple improvements to its SageMaker machine learning platform.

Now, as many companies are finding out, the impetus is much more on making such AI services and systems are actually useful and intuitive, rather than just being there for the sake of it.

“We’d been looking at generative AI before it became a widely accepted thing," Garman said, "when ChatGPT came out, there was kind of a discovery of a new area, of ways that this technology could be applied. And I think everybody was excited...a bunch of people — our competitors — kind of raced to put chatbots on top of everything and show that they were in the lead of generative AI,” he said.

With AWS' own Re:Invent 2024 showcase just a few months away, Garman was keen to highlight how the company's current strong position puts it in an enviable place, and promised more to come later this year.

“I think the reason that customers use AWS today is because we have the best and broadest set of services," he declared. "The reason that people lean into us today is because we continue to have, by far, the industry’s best security and operational performance, and we help them innovate and move faster. And we’ve got to keep pushing on that roadmap of things to do. It’s not really a change, per se, but it is the thing that I’ve probably emphasized the most: Just how important it is for us to maintain that level of innovation and maintain the speed with which we’re delivering.”

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