CEO of AWS: Huge shifts aren’t needed, but AI can still drive change
The CEO of Amazon Web Services has promised some big advancements soon, despite the company being in a fairly relaxed situation.
Speak with TechCrunchMatt Garman outlined how AWS’s strong position in the market actually afforded the company the luxury of being consistent and not making hasty changes.
“Not much has changed in the organization,” he noted. “The company is doing quite well, so there is no need to make a huge change to something we are focused on.”
AWS focus
Garman, who took over at AWS in May 2024 following the surprise resignation of Adam Selipsky, has stayed somewhat out of the spotlight in recent months, compared 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 that a slew of new products and services could be launched soon.
“I really emphasized with the team how important it is for us not to get hung up on the lead that we have in terms of the range of services and capabilities and features and functions that we have today – and to continue to lean forward and building that roadmap for real innovation,” he said.
With AI taking center stage for many companies, Garman also emphasized the importance of the technology within the company.
AI was a major theme at the company’s ReInvent 2023 event in December 2023, which 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 discovering, the impetus is much more to make such AI services and systems actually useful and intuitive, rather than just being there.
“We were looking at generative AI before it became widely accepted,” says Garman. “When ChatGPT came out, there was a kind of discovery of a new area, of ways in which this technology could be applied. And I think everyone was excited… a number of people – our competitors – were kind of racing to put chatbots on top of everything and show that they were at the forefront of generative AI,” he said.
With AWS’s own Re:Invent 2024 showcase just months away, Garman was keen to highlight how the company’s current strong position puts it in an enviable position, and promised more to come later this year.
“I think the reason customers use AWS today is because we have the best and broadest set of services,” he stated. “The reason people choose us today is because we still have by far the best security and safety services in the industry. operational performance, and we help them innovate and act faster. And we need to continue to implement the roadmap of things we need to do. It’s not really a change per se, but it’s something that I’ve probably emphasized the most: how important it is for us to maintain that level of innovation and maintain the speed at which we’re delivering results.”