Amazon to invest $100M in generative AI center: Report

Amazon’s cloud unit, commonly known as AWS, is building a $100 million solution to catch up with Microsoft and Google in the market for generative artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, the upcoming AWS Generative AI Innovation Center will connect Amazon experts in AI and machine learning with clients seeking to build applications based on the latest technologies. In generative AI, algorithms are used to create new content, such as audio, code, images, texts, simulations, and videos. Amazon said Highspot, Twilio, Ryanair and Lonely Planet will be among the first users of the innovation center. With the new center, the company expects to sell more cloud services amidst an increasing competition in the cloud infrastructure market. A recent analysis from Synergy Research Group comparing the biggest cloud services providers shows that enterprise spending on cloud solutions reached $63 billion worldwide in the first quarter of 2023, up 20% from the same quarter last year. Microsoft and Google had the strongest year-over-year growth rates, gaining 23% and 10% in worldwide market share, respectively. Amazon, the leader in cloud infrastructure, kept its 32% market share in Q1. “We will bring our internal AWS experts free-of-charge to a whole bunch of AWS customers, focusing on folks with significant AWS presence, and go help them turbocharge their efforts to get real with generative AI, get beyond the talk,” AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said at Bloomberg’s Tech Summit. As part of its strategy to stand up against big tech competitors, Amazon recently debuted Bedrock, an AI solution that allows customers to build out their own ChatGPT-like models. The company also announced the upcoming Titan, which includes two new foundational models developed by Amazon Machine Learning. On LinkedIn, recent opening positions for AI engineers show Amazon is also preparing to implement a new “search” functionality powered by AI for its online web store, with a ChatGPT-like interface.