AWS CEO Matt Garman recently spoke to Wired. In a lengthy interview, Garman answered a variety of questions, including many about how AI is shaping the tech industry, its workforce, and Amazon's position in the industry. To answer the question, does he worry that Amazon isn't a big part of many AI stories? And does he also worry that Amazon won't be part of that story? In response, Garman said, “I think both are true. I worry about that because I don't want people to think that we're not innovating or pushing the latest technology that our customers need. We want to make sure it's actually great and not just something that makes headlines.”He went on to quote Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and how it shaped his views. “Jeff Bezos had a saying that you have to be prepared to be misunderstood for a long time. I think that's been the case for some of the last two years for us. I think a lot of that narrative has changed now. When I talk to a lot of analysts, press, and I talk to customers, they say, 'Look, actually AWS has the strongest agent platform to build on.' They have the broadest set of models that I can build on. They have the most extensive security controls and compliance controls, and once you actually put these agents into production, you can actually audit them, know what they're doing, and control what they're doing. “That's what we're looking at,'' he said.Garman went on to add, “That's not to take anything away.” [other AI tools]. ChatGPT is a great consumer application, but it's something entirely different. That's not our job. Our business is to help banks, health care companies, media and entertainment companies, and energy companies power their business and deliver more for their customers, reduce costs, and do whatever they want.”He further added that he is very happy with Amazon's current position in the AI race. “So I'm very happy with where we are right now, and I think we're already seeing that narrative change significantly,” he said.
matt garman AWS product strategy
Speaking with Acquired podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal at the recent AWS re:Invent conference, Garman talked about how AWS is thinking about its product strategy. Garman described a layered approach to explaining where AWS is built and where there is room for partners. At the bottom are the core components such as compute and storage. AWS will always be there, he said.In the middle are databases, analytics engines, and AI models, and AWS, together with its partners, offers unique products and services. At the top end, there are millions of applications, and AWS selectively builds them only when it believes it has differentiated expertise.
