All posts tagged: aws

AWS nabs white hot gen AI media creation startup fal, becoming its preferred cloud provider

AWS nabs white hot gen AI media creation startup fal, becoming its preferred cloud provider

Published by skeptic

Generative AI’s rapid transition from text-based chatbots to high-fidelity media—spanning images, video, spatial 3D, and audio—has exposed a glaring bottleneck in the modern tech stack: infrastructure. Rendering pixels in real-time requires a staggering amount of compute, and developers are increasingly struggling to manage fragmented GPU clusters just to keep their applications online. Enter fal, a generative media creation platform that has quietly become the connective tissue for 2.5 million developers across the globe, offering literally hundreds of leading AI image, video, and audio creation and editing models — from proprietary ones like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-Images-2.0 and Google’s Nano Banana Pro 2 to open source rivals — all through its unified interface and APIs. Today, the San Francisco-based startup, recently valued at a massive $4.5 billion following a $300 million Series D round led by Sequoia Capital, announced it has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider. While the financial terms of the deal weren’t made public, the move signals a maturation in the generative media space, shifting the focus from simply building foundational …

Amazon reveals the cause of the May 2026 AWS outage

Amazon reveals the cause of the May 2026 AWS outage

Published by skeptic

Late in the week, an Amazon Web Services outage affected a range of websites. In the wake of that outage, which lasted from Thursday into Friday, Amazon has revealed what happened. In an update on the official AWS status website, Amazon revealed that the outage was caused by a “thermal event resulting in a loss of power” at a single data center in northern Virginia. In other words, some tech overheated. This prompted Amazon to shift traffic away from that data center’s “Availability Zone” during the late afternoon on Thursday. By early afternoon on Friday, Amazon had managed to restore its cooling systems, which kick-started the process of getting everything back online. Mashable Light Speed SEE ALSO: Amazon Web Services outage enters second day. Here’s what we know. “Our main effort during the event mitigation strategy was to bring back our cooling systems capacity. By May 8 1:50 PM, we were able to stabilize cooling system capacity to pre-event levels, which helped us to restore the majority of the impaired EC2 instances and EBS volumes,” Amazon said. …

Pentagon inks deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, and AWS to deploy AI on classified networks

Pentagon inks deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, and AWS to deploy AI on classified networks

Published by skeptic

After landing agreements with Google, SpaceX, and OpenAI, the U.S. Defense Department said on Friday that it has signed deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Reflection AI that allow it to deploy their AI tech and models on its classified networks for “lawful operational use.” “These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the statement reads. The deals come as the U.S. Department of Defense has accelerated its diversification of AI vendors in the wake of its controversial dispute with Anthropic over usage terms of its AI models. The Pentagon wanted unrestricted use of Anthropic’s AI tools, but the AI lab insisted on guardrails to prevent Anthropic’s tech from being used for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The two are fighting it out in court at the moment, though Anthropic in March won an injunction against the Pentagon’s move to brand the company a “supply-chain risk.” “The Department will …

Amazon’s cloud business is surging — and so is its capital spending

Amazon’s cloud business is surging — and so is its capital spending

Published by skeptic

Amazon was one of several tech giants that on Wednesday beat Wall Street’s first-quarter earnings expectations, offering more financial evidence that the AI boom continues to reward companies that supply the picks and shovels. Amazon’s cloud business is the latest example. Amazon Web Services, buoyed by its role in fueling the AI boom, saw its net sales increase 28% year-over-year, climbing to $37.6 billion, the company said Wednesday. It was the fastest growth rate for AWS in 15 quarters, Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s earnings call. Jassy attributed AWS’ success to its role in providing compute to the AI industry. “It’s very unusual for business to grow this fast on a base this large. The last time we saw growth at this clip, AWS was roughly half the size,” Jassy said. “We’ve never seen a technology grow as rapidly as AI. Amazon is already a leader, and companies continue to choose AWS for AI.” Jassy compared the business unit’s growth to the aughts. “To put our growth in perspective, three …

Amazon Drops After AWS Growth Misses Whisper Estimates As Capex Soars

Amazon Drops After AWS Growth Misses Whisper Estimates As Capex Soars

Published by Jenni Sidey

In our preview of Amazon’s earnings, we summarized sentiment as “Bullish, But Concerns Remain” with JPM noting that client “conversations were heavily AWS-skewed with investor focus on degree of acceleration and cloud $ re-capture driven by core workloads, AI, & new partnerships. Still, some concerns remain on broader AI positioning/strategy, Trainium traction, & gap to Azure/Google Cloud growth. Strong Stores execution expected, with N. America margin expansion. But higher fuel costs raise questions on consumer demand & operating margins.” They also warned that if everyone expects big AWS growth and has the same thesis, what breaks it out? And then let’s not forget what broke AMZN a quarter ago when the stock slumped after the company guided a whopping 50% increase in full year capex to $200BN (vs est of $146.1BN). Would it do a similar capex boost this time? With that in mind, here is what the company reported for Q1 moments ago: EPS $2.82, beating exp. 2.63, a solid beat after missing last quarter: Revenue was stronger across the board (except a modest miss …

AWS Quick’s personal knowledge graph is making orchestration decisions most control planes can’t see

AWS Quick’s personal knowledge graph is making orchestration decisions most control planes can’t see

Published by skeptic

Enterprise AI teams running centralized orchestration stacks now have a new variable to account for: AWS Quick, which expanded this week to a desktop-native agent that builds a persistent personal knowledge graph and executes actions across local files and SaaS tools — outside the visibility of most control planes. Unlike chat-based copilots that reset with each session, Quick now maintains a continuously updated knowledge graph built from the user’s local files, calendar, email and connected SaaS apps. It uses it to proactively trigger actions without waiting to be asked. AWS launched Quick in October last year as an alternative to AI workflow and productivity platforms coming from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. It was a way for enterprise employees to access insights from connected applications, an agent builder, deep research, and workflow automation. Now, it’s grown beyond a simple AI assistant and acts more as a proactive workflow agent with a stateful, real-time knowledge graph of the user. It integrates with third-party apps like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoom, Salesforce and Slack — and now local …

Amazon is already offering new OpenAI products on AWS

Amazon is already offering new OpenAI products on AWS

Published by skeptic

Almost as soon as OpenAI announced that its major investor and cloud partner, Microsoft, no longer has exclusive rights to any of its products, Amazon started gloating. After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon. Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service. Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security. Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch. The Microsoft/OpenAI relationship has reportedly been deteriorating for some time, with each of them …

Microsoft and OpenAI gut their exclusive deal, freeing OpenAI to sell on AWS and Google Cloud

Microsoft and OpenAI gut their exclusive deal, freeing OpenAI to sell on AWS and Google Cloud

Published by skeptic

Microsoft and OpenAI on Monday announced a sweeping overhaul of the partnership that has defined the commercial AI era, dismantling key pillars of exclusivity and revenue-sharing that bound the two companies together for years and replacing them with a looser, time-limited arrangement that gives both sides far more freedom to pursue rival relationships. The amended agreement, disclosed simultaneously in blog posts from both companies, marks the most significant restructuring since Microsoft first invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 — and it transforms what was once the most consequential exclusive technology alliance in a generation into something that more closely resembles a strategic but arm’s-length commercial relationship. Under the new terms, Microsoft will no longer pay any revenue share to OpenAI when customers access OpenAI models through Azure. OpenAI, meanwhile, will continue paying a revenue share to Microsoft through 2030 — at the same 20 percent rate — but that obligation is now subject to a total cap. Microsoft retains a license to OpenAI’s intellectual property for models and products through 2032, but that license …

Google and AWS split the AI agent stack between control and execution

Google and AWS split the AI agent stack between control and execution

Published by skeptic

The era of enterprises stitching together prompt chains and shadow agents is nearing its end as more options for orchestrating complex multi-agent systems emerge. As organizations move AI agents into production, the question remains: “how will we manage them?” Google and Amazon Web Services offer fundamentally different answers, illustrating a split in the AI stack. Google’s approach is to run agentic management on the system layer, while AWS’s harness method sets up in the execution layer.  The debate on how to manage and control gained new energy this past month as competing companies released or updated their agent builder platforms—Anthropic with the new Claude Managed Agents and OpenAI with enhancements to the Agents SDK—giving developer teams options for managing agents.  AWS with new capabilities added to Bedrock AgentCore is optimizing for velocity—relying on harnesses to bring agents to product faster—while still offering identity and tool management. Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini Enterprise adopts a governance-focused approach using a Kubernetes-style control plane. Each method offers a glimpse into how agents move from short-burst task helpers to longer-running entities …

Anthropic takes B from Amazon and pledges 0B in cloud spending in return

Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

Published by skeptic

Anthropic announced on Monday that Amazon has agreed to invest a fresh $5 billion, bringing Amazon’s total investment in the company to $13 billion. Anthropic, for its part, has agreed to spend over $100 billion on AWS over the next 10 years, obtaining up to 5 GW of new computing capacity to train and run Claude. The deal echoes an agreement Amazon struck with OpenAI just two months ago, when it joined a $110 billion funding round — contributing $50 billion — that valued the ChatGPT maker at a $730 billion pre-money valuation. That deal, too, was structured partly as cloud infrastructure services rather than straight cash. At the heart of this deal is Amazon’s custom chips: Graviton (a low-power CPU) and Trainium (an Nvidia competitor and AI accelerator chip). The Anthropic deal specifically covers Trainium2 through Trainium4 chips, even though Trainium4 chips are not currently available. The latest chip, Trainium3, was released in December. On top of that, Anthropic has secured the option to buy capacity on future Amazon chips as they become available. …