Meta Launches One of World’s Largest CPU‑Based AI Expansions with AWS Graviton5

Meta has signed a landmark deal with AWS to deploy tens of millions of Graviton5 cores, marking one of the largest CPU‑based AI infrastructure expansions to date. This partnership reflects a strategic shift toward powering agentic AI workloads—real‑time reasoning, code generation, and multi‑step orchestration—on purpose‑built silicon.

It is considered one of the world’s largest CPU‑based infrastructure expansions because Meta is deploying tens of millions of AWS Graviton5 cores at once—making it one of the biggest single CPU deployments ever announced by a major tech company. This scale places Meta among the largest Graviton customers globally and signals a fundamental shift in AI infrastructure design.

Meta’s initial rollout already involves tens of millions of Graviton cores, with flexibility to expand further. Few companies have ever announced CPU deployments at this magnitude.

The infrastructure is designed to support billions of AI interactions daily, powering agentic AI workloads such as reasoning, orchestration, and code generation.

Meta is now officially one of the largest AWS Graviton customers worldwide, surpassing most other enterprises that use Graviton for cloud workloads.

Why This Deal Matters

• Scale: Meta becomes one of the largest Graviton customers globally, starting with tens of millions of cores and room to expand.
• Shift in AI Infrastructure: While GPUs remain critical for training large models, agentic AI workloads are CPU‑intensive—requiring chips optimized for reasoning and orchestration rather than raw matrix multiplication.
• Energy Efficiency: Graviton5, built on 3‑nanometer technology, delivers up to 25% better performance than its predecessor while reducing environmental impact.

AWS Graviton5: Technical Highlights

AWS Graviton5 is Amazon Web Services’ latest generation of custom‑built ARM‑based CPUs, designed specifically for cloud workloads. It delivers up to 25% better performance than Graviton4, packs 192 cores per chip, and features a cache five times larger—making it one of the most powerful and energy‑efficient CPUs available for large‑scale AI and enterprise applications.   

• 192 cores with a cache 5× larger than the previous generation.
• 33% faster inter‑core communication, enabling higher bandwidth and reduced latency.
• Built on the AWS Nitro System, ensuring high performance, availability, and security.
• Supports Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for low‑latency, high‑bandwidth communication—critical for distributed agentic AI tasks.

Meta’s Strategic Goals

• Diversification of Compute: Expanding to Graviton allows Meta to run CPU‑intensive workloads efficiently at scale.
• Agentic AI at Scale: Infrastructure capable of handling billions of interactions and coordinating multi‑step agent workflows.
• Sustainability: Leveraging Graviton’s efficiency aligns Meta’s AI expansion with sustainability targets.

Industry Implications

• For AWS: Demonstrates AWS’s ability to deliver custom silicon integrated with its full AI stack.
• For Meta: Positions Meta as a leader in agentic AI infrastructure with a hybrid compute strategy.
• For the Market: Signals a broader industry trend—CPU‑optimized chips complement GPU‑driven training.

Comparison: GPU vs. Graviton CPU Workloads

Aspect	GPU (e.g., Nvidia H100)	AWS Graviton5 CPU
Best For	Training large AI models	Agentic AI workloads (reasoning, orchestration, code generation)
Core Count	Thousands of parallel cores	192 high‑performance cores
Latency	Higher for multi‑step tasks	Lower, optimized for reasoning
Energy Efficiency	High but power‑hungry	25% better than previous gen, built for efficiency
Scalability	Clustered GPU farms	Tens of millions of CPU cores, distributed workloads

Expert Voices

• Nafea Bshara, Amazon VP: “This isn’t just about chips; it’s about giving customers the infrastructure foundation to build AI that scales to billions worldwide.”
• Santosh Janardhan, Meta: “Expanding to Graviton allows us to run CPU‑intensive workloads behind agentic AI with the performance and efficiency we need at scale.”

In short: Meta’s massive Graviton5 deployment with AWS signals a new chapter in AI infrastructure—where CPUs, not just GPUs, become central to powering agentic AI systems at global scale.

Amazon's New AI Tool Turns Years of Drug Research Into Weeks

Amazon Web Services has launched Amazon Bio Discovery, an AI-powered platform that compresses early-stage drug discovery timelines from 18 months into just weeks, enabling rapid molecule design, antibody generation, and lab-in-the-loop testing.

Key Highlights

• Launch Date: April 2026
• Purpose: Accelerate early-stage drug discovery using AI-driven workflows
• Compression of Timelines: From 12–18 months to weeks
• No Coding Required: Scientists can run workflows without programming
• AI Foundation Models: Specialized biological models generate and evaluate molecules
• Lab-in-the-Loop: Candidates synthesized and tested with results fed back

Achievements & Adoption

Feature	Details
Antibody Generation	300,000 novel antibodies generated; 100,000 tested
Industry Adoption	Used by Bayer, Broad Institute, and 19 of top 20 pharma companies
Research Partners	Memorial Sloan Kettering reported sub-nanomolar affinity antibodies
Free Trial	AWS offers trial access for researchers

How It Works

AI agent helps scientists set up and run AI-powered drug discovery workflows.

• Model Selection: AI agents guide researchers
• Candidate Screening: Millions narrowed to 100–1,000 top candidates
• Optimization: AI refines therapeutic properties
• Integration: Results loop back into system knowledge

Risks & Considerations

• Validation Needed: Wet-lab testing required
• Regulatory Oversight: Compressed timelines challenge frameworks
• Data Dependence: Accuracy depends on training datasets
• Not a Replacement: Supports researchers, not replaces them

Impact for India & Global Pharma

With India’s growing biotech and pharma sector, platforms like Amazon Bio Discovery could accelerate vaccine and therapeutic development, especially in oncology, infectious diseases, and rare disorders.

Globally, this represents a paradigm shift in R&D efficiency, reducing costs and speeding access to life-saving drugs.

Emergence of AI based Drug Discovery

More than 200 AI-designed drugs are now in clinical development, with Phase I success rates of 80–90%, nearly double traditional averages. Big Pharma Adoption: In early 2026, Eli Lilly, GSK, and Pfizer signed major deals with AI drug discovery platforms, signaling mainstream adoption.

Several AI-driven platforms besides Amazon Bio Discovery are reshaping drug discovery in 2026, including Insilico Medicine, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and Exscientia, all of which are delivering clinical candidates and accelerating pharma R&D.

World’s First AI-Driven 5G Network Slicing Demo by Nokia, AWS, du & Orange

Nokia and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have unveiled what they call the industry’s first agentic AI-powered 5G-Advanced network slicing solution, showcased at MWC26 in Barcelona with operators du and Orange.

This breakthrough innovation inferences and leverages open Internet data, including traffic, events, locations, maps and operator data for network slicing business.

du and Orange first to explore this innovative slicing solution that adapts automatically to support customer demand.

Key Highlights

• Agentic AI integration: The system uses AI agents to continuously analyze real-world data such as traffic conditions, live events, weather, maps, and incidents.
• Adaptive slicing: This allows telecom operators to dynamically adjust network slices in real time, ensuring premium services that respond intelligently to changing conditions.
• Intent-based services: Enterprises can define service-level intents (like guaranteed latency or bandwidth), and the AI automatically tunes radio access network (RAN) policies to meet those requirements.
• Live deployment: du and Orange are the first operators to test this in their live 5G networks, demonstrating practical use cases for enterprise campuses and industry-specific applications.
• Business impact: The solution promises new revenue opportunities by enabling differentiated, premium connectivity services that adapt autonomously to customer demand.

This move positions Nokia and AWS at the forefront of AI-driven telecom innovation, competing with similar agentic AI initiatives from Ericsson and others.

15 Giants Forge Trusted Tech Alliance to Shape Secure Digital Future

The Trusted Tech Alliance (TTA) has just been launched by 15 of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, Jio Platforms, AWS, Nokia, Ericsson, SAP, Anthropic, Cohere, NTT, Cassava Technologies, Hanwha, Nscale, Rapidus, and Saab. The announcement was made at the Munich Security Conference on February 13, 2026.

Purpose of the Alliance

• Cross-border collaboration: Designed to unite tech firms from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.
• Trusted technology stack: Focus areas include AI, cloud infrastructure, connectivity, semiconductors, and software.
• Shared principles: Members commit to transparency, security, and data protection, regardless of their country of origin.
• Global trust-building: The alliance aims to counter fragmentation in the tech industry and ensure that innovation benefits are passed on globally.

Why It Matters

• Geopolitical context: Launched at a major security conference, signaling its role in addressing global concerns about digital sovereignty and secure supply chains.
• Industry impact: By pooling resources and influence, these companies can set standards for responsible AI, secure cloud services, and ethical data use.
• Strategic positioning: It’s also a move to strengthen resilience against cyber threats and reduce dependency on single-nation tech ecosystems.

Quick Snapshot of Members

Region	Companies
US	Google, Microsoft, AWS, Anthropic, Cohere
Europe	SAP, Ericsson, Nokia, Saab
Asia	Jio Platforms, NTT, Hanwha, Rapidus
Africa	Cassava Technologies
Global startups	Nscale

This alliance could become a benchmark for global tech governance, much like how financial institutions rely on Basel standards.

NTT DATA Signs Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud and Agentic AI Adoption

NTT DATA, a global leader in AI, digital business and technology services, today announced a multi-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help enterprises modernize legacy systems, adopt agentic AI responsibly and scale innovation across industries.

Combining NTT DATA’s expertise in cloud transformation, cloud-native modernization and Agentic AI with the scale and innovation velocity of AWS services, the collaboration will deliver tailored enterprise solutions that modernize mission-critical workloads, build secure cloud foundations and drive measurable business outcomes across regulated and high-growth industries.

Under the agreement, NTT DATA and AWS will accelerate enterprise transformation in four priority areas:

• AI-driven large-scale cloud transformation: Accelerating the migration and modernization of on-premises workloads on AWS, leveraging generative and agentic AI, automation and data platforms to unlock new business models and drive intelligent operations.
• Industry cloud solutions on AWS: Delivering modern industry-specific, repeatable offerings across financial services, healthcare, life sciences, public sector, manufacturing, retail and energy, leveraging NTT DATA’s Industry Cloud with 500+ extensible business components and AI agents.
• AI and data innovation for modern managed services and client experiences: Operating secure, compliant cloud environments at scale, including a recent collaboration agreement to modernize contact center solutions on Amazon Connect to accelerate the adoption of AI-driven customer experience (CX) solutions worldwide.
• Digital sovereignty and regulated cloud solutions on AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Enabling European governments and enterprises to meet stringent data residency and operational autonomy requirements. As a launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, NTT DATA will deliver sovereign-by-design cloud solutions and managed services that combine regulatory compliance with the same security, availability and performance clients expect from AWS.

AWS will support NTT DATA in running co-innovation programs, certifications and client events, to help enterprises adopt AI driven cloud solutions faster and with greater confidence.

To advance delivery, NTT DATA has formed a dedicated AWS Business Group, aligned with the AWS sales and delivery structure. This group includes close to 11,000 AWS-certified experts, with the objective of certifying nearly 10,000 more experts over the next three years.

"Cloud and AI are central to enterprise transformation," said Abhijit Dubey, President and CEO, NTT DATA, Inc. “Through our Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS, we are helping clients move beyond experimentation to scale AI impactfully and responsibly. This collaboration underscores our commitment to deliver secure, industry-specific solutions that create tangible business value for our clients worldwide."

“This collaboration will help more enterprise organizations unlock the potential of the cloud and AI to modernize their operations and accelerate innovation,” said Greg Pearson, VP AWS Global Sales. “Through industry-aligned architecture platforms, AI-driven customer experiences, and support in meeting evolving regulatory requirements through the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, we’re enhancing the ability to transform legacy workloads and build modern digital experiences on AWS.”

Proven success with Honda Trading Asia

Honda Trading Asia successfully migrated to the AWS Cloud with the expert support of NTT DATA.

"Migrating to the AWS Cloud with the expert support of NTT DATA has been an essential step in modernizing our systems and infrastructure and provides us with a powerful foundation for AI innovation. NTT DATA were always available to address our technical questions and worked closely with us to stay within our timeline and budget. Their expertise and support ensured a smooth transition, unlocking exciting growth possibilities through AWS,” said Somya Mayuraskoon, Director, Honda Trading Asia Co., Ltd.

Driving AI innovation across industries

NTT DATA will develop dozens of new industry-specific, AI driven cloud solutions on AWS through its Industry Cloud platform to accelerate digital transformation across regulated and high-growth sectors.

• Financial services: The collaboration will modernize core banking and compliance workloads to reduce risk and ensure regulatory requirements.
• Healthcare and life sciences: With support from AWS, NTT DATA will develop secure, AI-enabled data platforms to deliver intelligent insights from business applications, improving outcomes and accelerating research.
• Public sector: NTT DATA will work with AWS to deliver private cloud solutions that meet compliance requirements and enable secure digital services for citizens.
• Manufacturing and automotive: The collaboration will modernize business and IT operations using generative AI and agentic capabilities, driving improved financial and operational efficiency.

Innovation environments on AWS, including sandboxes and dedicated innovation labs will enable NTT DATA and AWS teams to develop, test and refine these solutions before scaling them for enterprise deployment.

NTT DATA will support these innovations with a full-stack suite of services, from advisory and cloud transformation to implementation and managed services, ensuring clients can adopt AWS technologies with speed, security and confidence. This initiative also expands NTT DATA’s Smart AI AgentTM Ecosystem, helping enterprises deploy and manage responsible, business-driven AI at scale.

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA is a $30+ billion business and technology services leader, serving 75% of the Fortune Global 100. We are committed to accelerating client success and positively impacting society through responsible innovation. We are one of the world’s leading AI and digital infrastructure providers, with unmatched capabilities in enterprise-scale AI, cloud, security, connectivity, data centers and application services. Our consulting and industry solutions help organizations and society move confidently and sustainably into the digital future. As a Global Top Employer, we have experts in more than 70 countries. We also offer clients access to a robust ecosystem of innovation centres as well as established and start-up partners. NTT DATA is part of NTT Group, which invests over $3 billion each year in R&D.

NetApp Collaborates with AWS to bring Enterprise Data to AWS AI Services

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, today announced a new capability that enables enterprises to make their workflows simpler and more efficient by connecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI and Analytics services directly with their NetApp data both in the cloud and on-premises. Amazon S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP® enable customers to accelerate AI and analytics projects by allowing FSx for ONTAP-resident file data to be accessed via the S3 API by AWS's extensive portfolio of AI/ML and analytics services—all while the data remains in place and is fully accessible for read / write via file protocols.

“By connecting FSx for ONTAP data natively to AWS's wide range of AI, ML, and analytics services, the new integration with Amazon S3 Access Points unleashes the potential to connect to more than 100 exabytes of enterprise data stored on NetApp systems for transformative use cases like generative AI and analytics uses cases built on AWS,” said Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Storage and Services at NetApp. “The introduction of S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx is a game changer for both FSx for ONTAP and for on-premises ONTAP users. Customers can now use advanced cloud services directly integrated with enterprise applications and data architecture.”

As a leading enterprise storage solution provider and the only one with a first-party data storage service natively built on AWS, NetApp is uniquely equipped to help customers accelerate modern workloads in the cloud. By using Amazon S3 Access Points with FSx for ONTAP, customers can connect S3-based AWS services and ISV applications to FSx for ONTAP file systems as if they were S3 buckets. Built-in replication capabilities in ONTAP enable enterprises to mobilize their data across hybrid cloud environments, allowing FSx for ONTAP customers to easily connect to their data stored on-premises. With this capability, file data stored in FSx for ONTAP is accessible for use with the broad range of artificial intelligence, machine learning, serverless compute, and analytics services and applications that work with S3. Users can control and simplify how different applications or users can access data by creating access points with names and permissions tailored to each application or user.

By eliminating the need to move data out of FSx for ONTAP to leverage AI services, customers also benefit from the built-in cyber resilience capabilities that make ONTAP the most secure storage on the planet, including real-time ransomware detection and integrated snapshots.

“NetApp provides a unified data platform that enables customers to extract value from their data across environments,” said Jasdeep Singh, Research Manager, Cloud and Edge Services at IDC. “The close collaboration between NetApp and AWS enables customers to leverage the scale, performance, and efficiency of the cloud alongside the streamlined and proven data management of NetApp ONTAP to drive innovation. Native integration with cloud-native AI and analytics services and advanced workload management capabilities give enterprises the tools they need to operate efficiently and adapt to evolving requirements.”

Additional Resources 

• NetApp Accelerates VMware Migrations with Amazon Elastic VMware Service Integratio
• Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP: A storage service built to optimize your AWS workloads
• NetApp Workload Factory: Workload Management

About NetApp

For more than three decades, NetApp has helped the world’s leading organizations navigate change – from the rise of enterprise storage to the intelligent era defined by data and AI. Today, NetApp is the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, helping customers turn data into a catalyst for innovation, resilience, and growth.

At the heart of that infrastructure is the NetApp data platform – the unified, enterprise-grade, intelligent foundation that connects, protects, and activates data across every cloud, workload, and environment. Built on the proven power of NetApp ONTAP, our leading data management software and OS, and enhanced by automation through the AI Data Engine and AFX, it delivers observability, resilience, and intelligence at scale.

Disaggregated by design, the NetApp data platform separates storage, services, and control so enterprises can modernize faster, scale efficiently, and innovate without lock-in. As the only enterprise storage platform natively embedded in the world’s largest clouds, it gives organizations the freedom to run any workload anywhere with consistent performance, governance, and protection.

With NetApp, data is always ready – ready to defend against threats, ready to power AI, and ready to drive the next breakthrough. That’s why the world’s most forward-thinking enterprises trust NetApp to turn intelligence into advantage.

Tata Communications, AWS Unveil One of India’s Largest AI-Optimized Network Deployments

Tata Communications, a leading global communications technology player, in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced that the companies will enable an advanced AI-ready network in India. The strategic collaboration will establish a high-capacity, resilient long-distance network connecting three major AWS infrastructure locations to bolster generative AI adoption and cloud innovation in India.

The collaboration marks one of the India’s largest ever network deployments by Tata Communications in terms of size, scale and bandwidth. AWS has two data centre Regions in India located in Mumbai and Hyderabad, and AWS Direct Connect and AWS Edge Network infrastructure in Chennai. The network will connect AWS infrastructure in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai through a comprehensive, national long-haul network, creating a powerful infrastructure backbone for AI and machine learning (ML) workloads across India.

Key highlights of the partnership:

• Next-Generation Network Connectivity: Leverage Tata Communications’ state-of-the-art network to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency connections essential for AI workloads.​ AWS will continue to deploy its custom network technologies on this network, enabling industry-leading security, availability, and performance between AWS locations
• Enablement of AI-Powered Applications: Further enable businesses across India to build, train, and deploy scalable AI applications, fostering innovation in sectors like healthcare, finance, and education​
• Commitment to Security and Compliance: Ensure robust security measures and adhere to regulatory standards to protect data integrity and privacy

The new network will help provide leading network performance and scalability that are critical for next-generation AI applications. By leveraging Tata Communications state-of-the-art network, AWS will further empower Indian businesses to develop Gen AI applications and train AI models, with unprecedented speed and efficiency. The network will feature express routes with ultra-low latency, helping ensure seamless data transfer and processing capabilities essential for compute-intensive AI and ML workloads.

“This association marks our largest ever National Long-Distance program and showcases Tata Communications’ unparalleled capability to support large-capacity, complex projects requiring scaled network solutions,” said Genius Wong, Executive Vice President, Core and Next-Gen Connectivity Services and Chief Technology Officer, Tata Communications. “AI is transforming industries globally, and our collaboration with AWS positions us at the forefront of this revolution in India. Together, we’re enabling a network that not only meets the current demands but anticipates the needs of tomorrow. By building a tailored network solution we’re ushering in an AI era in India, reinforcing our position as the long-term partner of choice for global technology leaders.”

“We are excited to work with Tata Communications to establish an advanced in-country network in India,” said Jesse Dougherty, Vice President for Network Edge Services at Amazon Web Services. ” The infrastructure is designed to support the most data intensive workloads, like 5G, generative AI, and high-performance computing. This collaboration with Tata Communications will further enable our customers in India to innovate at scale with cloud and generative AI, and drive growth in India’s rapidly expanding digital economy.”

AWS and HUMAIN Announce $5 Bn + Investment to Create AI Zone in Saudi Arabia

Big news in the AI world!.... Amazon Web Services (AWS) and HUMAIN have announced a $5 billion-plus investment to create a groundbreaking AI Zone in Saudi Arabia. This initiative aims to accelerate AI adoption both locally and globally, aligning with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.

HUMAIN is a Saudi Arabian Al company launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under the Public Investment Fund (PIF). It aims to position Saudi Arabia as a global Al hub by developing advanced Al technologies, next-generation data centers, cloud infrastructure, and Arabic Large Language Models (LLMs).

The AI Zone will feature:

• Dedicated AWS AI infrastructure, including world-class semiconductors and UltraCluster networks for faster AI training.
• AWS services like SageMaker, Bedrock, and Amazon Q, enabling businesses to develop generative AI applications with security and privacy.
• A unified AI agent marketplace, simplifying AI software deployment for the Saudi government.
• Support for Large Language Models (LLMs), including Arabic Large Language Models (ALLaM), to drive AI innovation across industries.

AWS and HUMAIN will also work together to advance an AI-powered startup sector in the Kingdom, providing access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud technology tools and programs, including AWS Activate, and helping Saudi Arabia’s most ambitious founders and entrepreneurs scale their businesses.

This partnership builds on AWS’s previous $5.3 billion investment in Saudi Arabia to develop an AWS infrastructure region, set to launch in 2026. The AI Zone is an additional investment, reinforcing Saudi Arabia’s ambition to become a global AI leader.

Notably, AWS is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that will become available in 2026. Amazon is investing US$5.3 billion (approx. 19.88 billion Saudi riyal) in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS.

The new AI Zone announced is an additional investment to grow global and local demand for advanced AI services in the Kingdom, and is part of AWS’s long-term commitment to bring its world-class infrastructure and services to Saudi Arabia.

This collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and builds upon the Kingdom’s pledge in 2024 to invest in building an AI-powered economy, representing a significant step towards realizing Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become a global AI leader. AWS will bring to Saudi Arabia its advanced server and network infrastructure capabilities, as well as its artificial intelligence and machine learning services – including Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, fully managed services for building and scaling generative AI (genAI) applications.

With Amazon Bedrock in Saudi Arabia, businesses and government organizations can access high-performing models from leading AI companies to develop genAI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon Q is the world’s most capable coding assistant, and also enables organizations to build genAI-powered assistants to answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data.

Saudi Arabia is making massive investments in Al to diversify its economy, and HUMAIN is a key player in this transformation.

"This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS’s advanced AI offerings, and reflects our commitment to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030,” said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. “Together, we will empower customers with cost-effective and secure cloud technologies, fuel innovation and economic growth across the nation, and enable HUMAIN to appeal to customers globally."

"HUMAIN’s partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia's journey to become a global leader in AI,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. “By leveraging AWS’s world-class cloud infrastructure and AI expertise and HUMAIN’s full-stack AI capabilities, we are creating an offering that will attract global investment and talent, thereby driving our digital transformation agenda forward.”

Top Image by Lara Jameson from Pexels

AWS Marketplace Debuts in India: A UPI-Style Revolution for Enterprise

AWS is bringing its Marketplace to India, offering a UPI-like experience for enterprise software procurement. This means businesses can discover, buy, and deploy software solutions from AWS partners with transactions in Indian rupees (INR). Payment options will include net banking, credit cards, and UPI, making it more accessible for Indian enterprises.

AWS India and South Asia President Sandeep Dutta called this a "UPI moment for enterprise software procurement", highlighting its potential to streamline digital transactions. AWS also reaffirmed its $16.4 billion investment in India by 2030 to support digital transformation.

This could be a game-changer for India's growing digital economy.

The launch of AWS Marketplace in India could significantly reshape enterprise software procurement. Here’s how:

• Simplified Access to Software: Businesses can now discover, buy, and deploy software solutions more efficiently, reducing procurement complexities. 
• Localized Transactions: Payments in Indian rupees (INR) with options like UPI, net banking, and credit cards make transactions smoother for Indian enterprises.
• Boost for Indian SaaS Providers: Indian software vendors can reach a wider audience through AWS Marketplace, enhancing their visibility and revenue potential.
• Accelerated Digital Transformation: AWS’s $16.4 billion investment in India by 2030 aims to fuel digital growth, supporting businesses in adopting cloud-based solutions.
• Security & Compliance Benefits: Enterprises can leverage AWS’s security infrastructure, ensuring compliance with Indian regulations while accessing global software solutions.

This could be a game-changer for India’s digital economy, making software procurement as seamless as UPI transactions.

Accenture Joins AWS to Expand the AWS Cloud Institute, a Virtual Cloud Skills Training Program

Accenture has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to expand the AWS Cloud Institute, a virtual cloud skills training program. This initiative aims to address the global demand for skilled cloud professionals, offering comprehensive training and certifications.

The AWS Cloud Institute is a comprehensive virtual training program designed to equip individuals with the skills needed for cloud careers. It offers a nine-course curriculum that includes on-demand digital learning, live instructor-led sessions, over 150 interactive labs, and two capstone projects. These elements provide hands-on experience and practical knowledge.

This initiative combines Accenture's LearnVantage platform with AWS's expertise to offer a comprehensive nine-course program. It includes on-demand digital learning, live instructor-led sessions, interactive labs, and capstone projects. Participants can also prepare for and earn AWS certifications, equipping them with the skills needed for cloud careers.

Initially launched in the U.S. in 2023, the program is now expanding to regions like Saudi Arabia and the UAE to address the global demand for skilled cloud professionals.

Accenture's LearnVantage platform uses AI to curate personalized learning journeys, ensuring that participants receive tailored content and mentorship.

The program aims to bridge the skills gap in cloud technology, creating pathways for learners to fast-track their careers in this competitive field.

Kishore Durg, global lead of LearnVantage, Accenture, said – “We’re thrilled to collaborate with AWS to launch AWS Cloud Institute powered by Accenture LearnVantage. This program will equip professionals with the essential skills and knowledge they need to forge new career pathways in a highly competitive field, and also help address the critical skills gap that organizations face. Our global delivery capabilities and deep expertise will ensure that learners receive a structured, high-quality education that puts them in high demand.”

Uwem Ukpong, vice president of Global Services, AWS said – “Today’s announcement marks a significant step in our commitment to fostering the next generation of cloud professionals, allowing us to expand our reach and bring our capabilities to new regions. This follows AWS’s launch of its second Middle East cloud region in the UAE in 2022, with a planned US$5 billion investment in the local economy through 2036. It also builds upon AWS’s US$5.3 billion investment to establish data centers in KSA. By partnering with Accenture, we are able to leverage our combined expertise to deliver a world-class training program that will empower people in KSA and UAE to build their careers as cloud professionals.”

AWS to Invest $8.2 Bn in Maharashtra

AWS has announced a significant investment of $8.2 billion in Maharashtra over the next few years. This investment aims to enhance AWS's infrastructure in India by deploying advanced graphical processing units (GPUs) and establishing state-of-the-art compute facilities and cloud management services. The move is expected to create substantial employment opportunities and contribute to India's growing digital economy.

This investment is part of AWS's larger plan to invest $12.7 billion across India by 2030 to meet the increasing demand for cloud services and artificial intelligence. The commitment to Maharashtra is likely to bolster the state's position as a tech hub and drive economic growth.

AWS's $8.2 billion investment in Maharashtra will focus on several key projects:

• State-of-the-Art Compute Facilities: AWS plans to establish advanced computing facilities equipped with the latest technologies, including graphical processing units (GPUs) to enhance their cloud infrastructure.
• Cloud Management Services: The investment will also include the development of sophisticated cloud management services to support the growing demand for cloud solutions in India.
• Employment Growth: This investment is expected to create significant employment opportunities in the region, contributing to the local economy.
• Innovation City: AWS's investment aligns with Maharashtra's broader vision of becoming a global capital for data centers, as part of the state's AI-powered 'Innovation City' initiative.

These projects aim to bolster Maharashtra's position as a tech hub and drive economic growth in the region.

Construction Firm Claims Rs 150 Crore Data Loss from AWS Cloud Storage; Unable To Retrieve Now

A builder named Adarsh Developers has filed an FIR against Amazon Web Services (AWS), claiming a data loss worth Rs 150 crore. The company used AWS's cloud storage services to store their financial and customer data, but due to some actions by individuals at Redington and AWS teams, they lost over six years of business data. This has caused substantial financial and operational losses.

AWS has stated that despite their best efforts, they are unable to retrieve the lost data. The FIR has been filed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Information Technology Act. A probe has been initiated, but Redington have not commented further.

According to an AWS spokesperson — "The claims against AWS are false. AWS operated as designed and is not responsible for the deletion of Adarsh Developers' data."

The Bengaluru-based builder has 36 years of experience in developing residential, commercial, and hospitality projects, used Amazon Web Services (AWS) to store their financial data and customer information. In May 2023, AWS representatives assured the company that their cloud storage servers would ensure data retrieval even in the event of cyber-attacks or natural disasters.

In December 2023, Adarsh Developers procured cloud storage facilities through an SAP implementation partner, SAVIC Technologies Pvt Ltd, for Rs 88,59,924, including GST. The agreement was to maintain the data securely for three years until November 2027.

However, on January 9, 2024, the implementation partner informed Adarsh Developers that due to actions by individuals at Redington and AWS teams, there had been a data loss.

The complaint stated that employees at Redington Group had entered the storage area at the root level and deleted the account completely, resulting in the loss of over six years of business data. This data loss has caused substantial financial and operational losses, estimated at Rs 150 crore.

AWS India has stated that despite their best efforts, they are unable to retrieve the lost data. The FIR has been filed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Information Technology Act, and a probe has been initiated.

It's a complex situation with significant implications for data security and cloud storage practices. Do you think AWS and Redington should be held accountable for this data loss? Comment in the comments section below.

Regulations regarding data protection in India

India has a comprehensive framework for data protection, primarily governed by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act) of 2023. Here are some key points:

1. Consent-Based Data Processing: Organizations must obtain proper consent from individuals before collecting and processing their personal data.
2. Rights of Data Principals: Individuals have several rights under the DPDP Act, including the right to information, access, rectification, data portability, and the right to be forgotten.
3. Obligations of Data Fiduciaries: Organizations (data fiduciaries) are required to implement reasonable security practices and procedures to protect personal data.
4. Data Protection Board: The DPDP Act establishes a Data Protection Board of India to oversee compliance and address grievances.
5. Penalties and Fines: Violations of the DPDP Act can result in significant penalties and fines.

Additionally, the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) and its associated rules, such as the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 (SPDI Rules), also play a crucial role in data protection.

Accenture Estimates That AWS Can Help Indian Organisations Reduce Associated Carbon Emissions by Upto 99% Compared to On-Premises

AWS can help Indian organisations reduce carbon emissions of AI workloads

New study estimates workloads optimised on Amazon Web Services (AWS) can help organisations in India reduce associated carbon emissions by up to 99% compared to on-premises

A new study commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and completed by Accenture shows that an effective way to minimise the environmental footprint of leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) is by moving IT workloads from on-premises infrastructure to AWS cloud data centres in India and around the globe. Accenture estimates that AWS’s global infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more efficient than on-premises. For Indian organisations, the total potential carbon reduction opportunity for AI workloads optimised on AWS is up to 99% compared to on-premises data centres.

The research states that simply utilising AWS data centres for compute-heavy, or AI, workloads in India yields a 98% reduction in carbon emissions compared to on-premises data centres. This is credited to AWS’s utilisation of more efficient hardware (32%), improvements in power and cooling efficiency (35%), and additional carbon-free energy procurement (31%). Further optimising on AWS by leveraging purpose-built silicon can increase the total carbon reduction potential of AI workloads to up to 99% for Indian organisations that migrate to and optimise on AWS.

“Considering 85% of global IT spend by organisations remains on-premises, a carbon reduction of up to 99% for AI workloads optimised on AWS in India is a meaningful sustainability opportunity for Indian organisations,” said Jenna Leiner, Head of Environment Social Governance (ESG) and External Engagement, AWS Global. “As India accelerates towards its US$1 trillion-dollar digital opportunity and encourages investments into digital infrastructure, sustainability innovations and minimising IT related carbon emissions will be critical in also helping India meet its net-zero emissions by 2070 goal. This is particularly important given the rising adoption of AI. AWS is constantly innovating for sustainability across our data centres —optimising our data centre design, investing in purpose-built chips, and innovating with new cooling technologies - so that we continuously increase energy efficiency to serve customer compute demands.”

“This research shows that AWS's focus on hardware and cooling efficiency, carbon-free energy, purpose-built silicon, and optimized storage can help organizations reduce the carbon footprint of AI and machine learning workloads,” said Sanjay Podder, global lead for Technology Sustainability Innovation at Accenture. “As the demand for AI continues to grow, sustainability through technology can play a crucial role in helping businesses meet environmental goals while driving innovation.”

Sustainable chip technology innovation – purpose-built silicon

One of the most visible ways AWS is innovating for energy efficiency is through the company’s investment in AWS chips. Launched in 2018, the custom AWS-engineered general purpose processor, Graviton, was the first-of-its-kind to be deployed at scale by a major cloud provider. The latest Graviton4 offers four times the performance of Graviton, and while Graviton3 uses 60% less energy for the same performance as comparable Amazon EC2 instances (where the compute happens in a data centre), Graviton4 is even more energy efficient.

AWS customers are also benefiting from the carbon reduction potential of Graviton. Paytm, India’s leading payments and financial services distribution platform, witnessed a reduction in workload carbon intensity by adopting Graviton processors, reporting up to 47% estimated decrease in carbon emissions per transaction. Similarly, IBS Software, a leading SaaS solutions provider to the global travel industry, reported that other than improving performance and reducing cost by adopting Graviton processors, the company saw a 40% reduction in carbon emissions per instance hour.

Running generative AI applications in a more sustainable way requires innovation at the silicon level with energy efficient hardware. To optimise performance and energy consumption, AWS developed purpose-built silicon like the AWS Trainium chip and AWS Inferentia chip to achieve significantly higher throughput than comparable accelerated compute instances. AWS Trainium cuts the time taken to train generative AI models—in some cases from months to hours. This means building new models requires less money and power, with energy-consumption reductions of almost one third/up to 29%. AWS Inferentia is AWS’s most power-efficient machine learning inference chip. AWS Inferentia2 machine learning accelerator delivers up to 50% higher performance per watt and can reduce costs by up to 40% against comparable instances. These purpose-built accelerators enable AWS to efficiently execute AI models at scale. This translates to a reduced infrastructure footprint for similar workloads, resulting in enhanced performance per watt of power consumption.

Improving energy efficiency across AWS infrastructure

Through innovations in engineering—from electrical distribution to cooling techniques, AWS’s infrastructure is able to operate closer to peak energy efficiency. AWS optimises resource utilisation to minimise idle capacity, and continuously improves the efficiency of its infrastructure. For example, AWS removed the large central Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from its data centre design to instead use small battery packs and custom power supplies that AWS integrates into every rack, which has improved power efficiency and has further increased availability. Every time power is converted from one voltage to another, or from AC to DC and vice versa, some power is lost in the process. By eliminating the central UPS, AWS are able to reduce these conversions. Additionally, AWS have optimised rack power supplies to reduce energy loss in that final conversion. Combined, these changes reduce energy conversion loss by about 35%.

After powering AWS’s server equipment, cooling is one of the largest sources of energy use in AWS data centres. To increase efficiency, AWS uses different cooling techniques, including free air cooling depending on the location and time of year, as well as real-time data to adapt to weather conditions. Implementing these innovative cooling strategies is more challenging on a smaller scale at a typical on-premises data centre. AWS’s latest data centre design seamlessly integrates optimised air-cooling solutions alongside liquid cooling capabilities for the most powerful AI chipsets, like the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Superchips. This flexible, multimodal cooling design allows AWS to extract maximum performance and efficiency whether running traditional workloads or AI models.

According to the study, AWS’s additional carbon-free energy procurement in India contributes 31% in carbon emissions reduction for compute-heavy workloads and 44% for storage-heavy workloads. Aligning with Amazon's commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions across all operations by 2040, AWS is rapidly transitioning its global infrastructure to match electricity use with 100% carbon-free energy. Amazon met its 100% renewable energy goal seven years ahead of schedule. In India 100% of the electricity consumed by AWS data centres was matched with renewable energy sources procured in country in 2022 and 2023. This is due to Amazon’s investment in 50 renewable energy projects in India with an estimated 1.1 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, enough energy to power more than 1.1 million homes in New Delhi each year.

AWS Announces $230 Mn Commitment for Generative AI Startups AWS Announces $230 Million Commitment for Generative AI Startups Worldwide

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a significant commitment of $230 Million in AWS credits to support generative AI startups worldwide. This initiative is designed to accelerate the development of new generative AI applications and help bring innovations to market more quickly.

The commitment will fund the second cohort of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, which provides hands-on expertise and up to $1 million in credits to each of the top 80 early-stage startups that are using generative AI to tackle complex challenges. The program aims to assist startups in areas such as financial services, healthcare, media and entertainment, business, and climate change.

Startups can use these AWS credits to access various AWS technologies, including compute, storage, and database services, as well as AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia2, which are energy-efficient AI chips offering high performance at a low cost. Additionally, credits can be utilized on Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that aids companies in building and training machine learning models, and Amazon Bedrock, which provides tools for building secure generative AI applications.

Applications for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator are open now and will be accepted until July 19 and startups can apply here. This is a great opportunity for startups specializing in AI to gain valuable resources and mentorship to scale their businesses and innovate within the AI space.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a significant commitment of $230 Million in AWS credits to support generative AI startups worldwide. This initiative is designed to accelerate the development of new generative AI applications.

IBM to Acquire Japan's SKYARCH NETWORKS Inc., An AWS Specialist

IBM has signed an agreement to acquire SKYARCH NETWORKS INC., a Japan-based professional services company specializing in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This strategic move is aimed at strengthening IBM's AWS consulting capabilities in Japan.

The acquisition is part of IBM's broader initiative to enhance its hybrid cloud services and AI capabilities. SKYARCH NETWORKS, being an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, brings a wealth of expertise in infrastructure design, development, operation monitoring, and support across various industries. This aligns with IBM's commitment to an open ecosystem approach, collaborating across technology partners to deliver client-centric value.

The Japanese cloud market is expected to grow significantly, with a forecasted 17.9% CAGR from 2022 to 2027. IBM plans to train and skill 10,000 consultants globally on AWS generative AI services by the end of 2024, positioning itself to meet the increasing demand for cloud services expertise in the region.

The acquisition is expected to close in June 2024, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals¹. This marks IBM's fifth acquisition announced in 2024 and the 18th for IBM Consulting since Arvind Krishna became CEO in April 2020.

IDC expects the Japanese cloud market will grow by 17.9% CAGR between 2022 to 2027. IBM has committed to training and skilling 10,000 consultants globally on AWS generative AI services by the end of 2024. SKYARCH NETWORKS will position IBM Consulting to address the growing demand for end-to-end cloud services expertise in the region.

The acquisition follows IBM’s recent purchase of HashiCorp and the sale of its QRadar Saas suite to Palo Alto Networks, signaling its intention to enhance its cloud service offerings. 

SAP To Use AWS's AI Chips and Integrate GenAI Models from Amazon Bedrock

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SAP SE have announced an expanded strategic collaboration to enhance cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) experiences and enable enterprises to harness generative artificial intelligence (AI) for new capabilities and efficiencies. This partnership aims to transform how businesses operate by integrating generative AI into their core processes.

SAP plans to utilize AWS's specialized chips for training and deploying its future Business AI offerings. The chips in question are AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia, which are purpose-built for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads. This move is part of the broader strategic collaboration between AWS and SAP to integrate generative AI into SAP's cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) experiences.

AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia are custom-built chips designed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for specific machine learning (ML) tasks. AWS Trainium is optimized for deep learning (DL) training of large models, including generative Al models.

Each Trainium accelerator includes two second-generation NeuronCores and 32 GB of high- bandwidth memory, delivering up to 190 TFLOPS of FP16/BF16 compute power, ideal for training tasks in natural language processing, computer vision, and recommendation systems. While Inferentia2 accelerators have 32 GB of HBM per accelerator, significantly increasing memory capacity and bandwidth.

By leveraging AWS's powerful hardware, SAP aims to enhance the performance and efficiency of its AI-driven business applications. This will enable SAP customers to harness the capabilities of generative AI for a variety of applications, streamlining processes and driving innovation within their operations.

In addition, the collaboration also includes the integration of generative AI models from Amazon Bedrock, such as the Anthropic Claude 3 model family and Amazon Titan, into the SAP AI Core infrastructure. This will provide SAP customers with access to high-performing large language models (LLMs) and other foundation models (FMs) that can be customized with their own data.

Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables developers to build and scale generative Al applications using foundation models (FMs).

The goal is to make it easier for customers to adopt the RISE with SAP solution on AWS, improve the performance of SAP workloads in the cloud, and embed generative AI across an enterprise's portfolio of business-critical applications. This initiative is expected to accelerate the adoption of generative AI and modernize key business processes built on SAP solutions.

The generative AI hub in SAP AI Core infrastructure provides customers with secure access to a broad range of large language models (LLMs) that can easily be integrated into SAP business applications. Tens of thousands of customers use Amazon Bedrock to easily, quickly and securely build and scale generative AI applications using FMs from leading AI companies such as AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI and Amazon.

Amazon Bedrock, the Generative AI Service of AWS, is Now Generally Available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced at AWS Summit Bengaluru that Amazon Bedrock, which offers customers the easiest, fastest, and most secure way to build and scale generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications and experiences, is generally available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region.

To help customers globally take advantage of this new technology, Amazon Bedrock became generally available to all customers worldwide through select regions in 2023. The general availability of Amazon Bedrock in AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region will support customers across the country, including public sector organisations and companies in regulated industries, to innovate with generative AI and to have further choices on where they can run and store generative AI applications. Deploying generative AI workloads closer to end users will also help customers with low latency needs. Low latency is especially important for generative AI applications in delivering faster processing and response times, which are essential for AI tasks like on-the-fly content generation, interactive user experiences, and real-time conversational insights.

“AWS is committed to helping customers accelerate their generative AI journey from experimentation to production in an efficient and secure way. Our customers value choice; some prefer to build from scratch, while others prefer models tailored for specific use cases. We want to provide organisations in India with the performant, cost-effective infrastructure they need to build with generative AI,” said Shalini Kapoor, Chief Technologist–APJ Public Sector, Director–AWS India and South Asia. “The availability of Amazon Bedrock in India will further spur innovation that large enterprises, startups, independent software vendors, and public sector organisations are building in India, and complement their efforts to upskill their talent in generative AI.”

Organisations across India are using generative AI for a wide variety of use cases, including driving productivity gains, creating innovative user experiences, and reimagining work. Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service which offers customers a selection of best-in-class models and powerful model customisation capabilities, built with enterprise-grade security and privacy.

Additionally, AWS provides customers with the tools, resources, and training they need to advance responsible and secure innovation in generative AI. Customers can access the latest generation of models, including Amazon Titan (Text Lite, Text Express, Multi-modal Embeddings, Image Generator), Cohere (Embeddings English, Embeddings Multi-lingual), Anthropic (Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet), Meta (Llama 3 8B, Llama 3 70B), and Mistral (Mistral Large, Mistral 7B, Mistral 8x7B).

“We are excited about helping customers accelerate generative AI innovation across all industries with Amazon Bedrock. Take the financial services industry, for example, trading firms could supercharge their trading algorithms with generative AI to continually optimise trading strategies based on real-time portfolio performance and evolving market conditions. Or in the healthcare industry, hospitals could use virtual care assistants to alleviate resource constraints by using conversational language capabilities to assist with patient queries,” said V.G. Sundar Ram, Head of Business Development, AWS India and South Asia.

AWS Customers and Partners innovating using generative AI

Max Life Insurance is India’s leading private life insurer. “We are excited about the possibilities that emerging technologies like generative AI offer in terms of driving innovation and enhancing our customer experience,” said Sanjay Thawakar, SVP-AI Works at Max Life Insurance. “Through our collaboration with AWS, we anticipate a considerable enhancement in the efficiency of our field agents. This will enable swift responses to customer queries or gaining deeper market insights, thereby elevating the overall customer experience. With the launch of Amazon Bedrock in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region, we are thrilled to embrace this revolutionising technology and look forward to exploring additional cutting-edge generative AI use cases to enhance efficiencies across all divisions.”

Shellkode is an AWS Partner and a leading IT solutions firm that helps customers harness the power of change, speed, and innovation to create all-round business value by putting data and cloud at the core of business solutions. “As a Born-in-the-Cloud Partner and among the first generative AI Competency Partners in India, we’re excited by AWS’s continued innovation and democratisation of cutting-edge generative AI capabilities. With AWS, we have been able to create purpose-built solutions that harness generative AI such as negotiation assistant, invoice management, email assistant with multi-lingual support, customer interaction analysis, and smart assistants,” said Arun Kumar Selvaraj, CEO of Shellkode. “Through continued collaboration between Shellkode and AWS, and now with the availability of Amazon Bedrock in Mumbai, we look forward to helping customers in the country maximise the power of generative AI to increase their business process capabilities multi-fold.”

Supporting upskilling and entrepreneurship in generative AI

Across India, AWS is making investments in partner support programs, startup accelerators, and Large Language Model (LLM) development programs designed to make it even easier for local organisations to build specialised generative AI applications. This includes initiatives such as the AWS ML Elevate program, aimed at helping startups build generative AI applications for scale.

Based on the recent AWS-commissioned study, titled “Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Asia-Pacific Workforce for Jobs of the Future”, AI skills could boost salaries of workers in India by more than 54% and accelerate career growth as AI adoption ramps up. AWS has trained 5.5 million people across India in cloud skills since 2017. However, with the rapid adoption of cloud-enabled technologies like AI, more needs to be done to upskill the workforce at scale so organisations can innovate and grow in an AI-driven future. In November 2023, Amazon launched the AI Ready initiative that complements AWS’s commitment to provide free cloud computing skills training to 29 million individuals globally by 2025. Through AI Ready, AWS now offers a suite of free AI and generative AI training courses, aligned to both technical and non-technical roles, so that anyone can acquire AI skills.

AWS has a long-term commitment to customers and local communities in India. In 2023, AWS announced plans to invest US $12.7 billion in India by 2030 into local cloud infrastructure. This brings AWS’s total investment in India to INR 1,36,500 crores (US $16.4 billion) by 2030. This investment will contribute US $23.3 billion to India’s GDP by 2030, and support approximately 131,700 full-time jobs annually at local businesses.

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic regions, with announced plans for 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. 

AWS and Nandan Nilekani's EkStep Establish Joint Innovation Center To Create Digital Public Goods Infrastructure

Amazon Web Services (AWS) India Private Limited and EkStep Foundation, a philanthropic initiative founded by Nandan Nilekani, Rohini Nilekani, and Shankar Maruwada, have established a Joint Innovation Center (JIC) to foster and accelerate the creation of digital public goods and digital public infrastructures. This collaboration aims to support public sector and commercial entities in developing digital solutions for large-scale use and help governments build socially and digitally inclusive economies.

The JIC will focus on sectors such as education, agriculture, finance, healthcare, and climate change, and it will leverage technologies like cloud computing, generative AI, and analytics from AWS. The initiative is part of a broader vision to use technology to create a more equitable and inclusive society.

According to the Nasscom-Arthur D. Little report Digital Public Infrastructure of India – Accelerating India’s Digital Inclusion, the economic value addition from DPIs to India’s GDP has the potential to grow 3x – from 0.9% in 2022 to 2.9 – 4.2% by 2030. The JIC by AWS and EkStep will be a mechanism to bring together key stakeholders who are committed to driving digital cooperation for a more equitable and sustainable world. These stakeholders include owners and developers of DPGs/ DPIs; enablers like startups, independent software vendors (ISVs), and system integrators (SIs); and adopters/ implementers like governments, multilateral organisations, and private sector entities. The JIC will promote collaboration among these stakeholders to develop DPGs and DPIs for sectors such as education, agriculture, finance, healthcare, and climate change, and help accelerate societal transformation.

The JIC will focus on supporting startups, ISVs, and SIs to leverage the power of technologies such as cloud computing, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and analytics from AWS; help them imagine and invent new use cases for DPGs and DPIs, incubate them, and enhance existing ones; and offer comprehensive starter kits for states and countries interested in such solutions.

To enable ease-of-use and faster adoption, the DPGs and DPIs will be packaged for one-click deployment via the AWS Partner Network (APN), which features more than 130,000 partners from more than 200 countries. AWS will explore featuring the DPGs on AWS Marketplace, providing a global channel to showcase and distribute the solutions.

AWS will further explore featuring the DPGs and DPIs on the Open Government Solutions Catalog, which provides government organisations with valuable resources such as digital solutions, policies, and standards, enabling them to explore and reuse proven approaches to digital transformation.

“Governments and organisations serving the public at large are increasingly seeing how DPIs using cloud computing and open-source solutions can provide scalable, secure, agile, and efficient services to people, accelerating public service transformation programs”, said Shalini Kapoor, Director and Chief Technologist, AWS India Private Limited. “Building newer DPGs and DPIs requires collective focus from stakeholders on solving problems of scale, and we are pleased to have EkStep’s visionary thinking and commitment in this initiative. The two organisations share a belief that technology should cut across barriers and enable the creation of a more equitable and inclusive society.”

EkStep Foundation, a philanthropic initiative founded by Nandan Nilekani, Rohini Nilekani, and Shankar Maruwada, aims to utilise technology to build population scale public goods, empower communities, and orchestrate sharing of resources, enabling civil society, governments, and the private sector to make meaningful decisions for societal benefits.

A prime example of this approach is EkStep’s Sunbird, an open-source, modular, and configurable digital infrastructure that can help organisations scale the delivery of resources to users. Sunbird can be applied for a variety of applications such as capacity building and professional development in education, and credentialing, accreditation, and capturing health records in healthcare. It can be used to record crop quality, standards, soil quality, and inventory, in agriculture; supporting financial inclusion by capturing people’s income certificates and credit worthiness; and driving climate-positive actions by recording carbon credits and sustainability scores for products and organisations.

“EkStep is committed to accelerating inclusive innovation that can address profound challenges and drive positive change on a national level,” said Shankar Maruwada, Co-founder and CEO, EkStep Foundation. “The establishment of a Joint Innovation Center with AWS marks a significant leap towards the adoption and scaling of India's Digital Public Infrastructure with the extensive reach and expertise of AWS’s Partner Network. It truly takes a collaborative effort to come together with deep conviction to build and implement digital solutions at population-scale, especially in the era of AI . We look forward to delivering on this vision by building on AWS’s proven global abilities of scale, resilience, and security, and the innovation community.”

The JIC further propels the scope for innovation and driving scalable impact from India, where a wide range of open-source based digital solutions have been pioneered to benefit citizens at scale. Examples include Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), a global DPG developed for issuing trusted foundational identifications, currently at different stages of adoption in 17 countries serving more than 110 million people, where MOSIP’s development and pilot environments use AWS for rapid deployment and scale.

Another example is Namma Yatri, a popular autorickshaw booking application built on the Beckn protocol, which enables the creation of open, peer-to-peer decentralized networks for pan-sector economic transactions. Namma Yatri is committed to the vision of open mobility; building on AWS has helped Namma Yatri to scale the application to serve 5 million commuters across eight cities in six months, and generate INR 4.5 billion as commission-free earnings to drivers.

AWS, Accenture and Anthropic Join Hands To Boost AI Adoption Among Enterprises

AWS (Amazon Web Services), Accenture, and Anthropic have recently announced a partnership to help organizations scale AI responsibly. This collaboration aims to support industries like healthcare, public sector, banking, and insurance in adopting and customizing generative AI technology.

Through this partnership, organizations can access Anthropic’s AI models via Amazon Bedrock, a service that provides high-performing foundation models. Accenture is set to enhance these capabilities with industry-specific solutions, while AWS will offer the infrastructure needed to deploy these models effectively.

This initiative is particularly significant as it combines the technical AI expertise of Anthropic, the industry knowledge of Accenture, and the cloud computing capabilities of AWS. It's designed to speed up innovation, improve customer service, and make workforces more productive, all while ensuring data privacy and security.

Over 1,400 Accenture engineers will be trained as specialists in using Anthropic’s models on AWS, allowing them to provide customers with end-to-end support that accelerates their AI strategies from concept to production. Accenture’s engineers will help organizations use their own data to fine-tune Anthropic’s models on AWS to enhance performance for their use case and industry. Teams across Accenture and AWS will also guide customers on prompt and platform engineering to help them deploy AI models through Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker.

By combining Anthropic's technical AI expertise, AWS's approach to security and reliability, and Accenture's deep industry knowledge, the companies hope to provide tailored solutions for trust-driven sectors and streamline the adoption of powerful AI systems that put humans at the center.

In addition, organizations will gain access to a broad set of capabilities they need to build generative AI applications with security, privacy and responsible AI.

Teams across Accenture, Anthropic and AWS will also help clients with prompt and platform engineering, providing best practices on how to deploy customized models on Amazon Bedrock or Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that brings together a broad set of tools to enable high-performance, low-cost machine learning for any generative AI use case.

Hiring AI-skilled Talent is a Priority for Over 9 in 10 Employers in India but 79% Struggle to Find the AI Talent They Need

AI skills could boost salaries of workers in India by more than 54% and accelerate career growth as AI adoption ramps up, finds new research

Hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority for over nine in ten employers in India but 79% struggle to find the AI talent they need, highlighting a looming AI skills gap in the country

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, has just released new research showing that when artificial intelligence (AI) is fully harnessed, workers in India with AI skills and expertise could see salary hikes of over 54%, with workers in IT (65%), and research and development (62%) enjoying the highest pay increases.

To better understand emerging AI usage trends and skilling needs in workplaces, AWS commissioned Access Partnership to conduct a regional study, titled “Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Asia-Pacific Workforce for Jobs of the Future”. Over 1,600 workers and 500 employers were surveyed in India.

On top of significant salary increases, 97% of workers in India expect their AI skills to have a positive impact on their careers, including increased job efficiency and career advancement. 95% of workers in India indicated a keen interest in developing AI skills to accelerate their careers, and this interest transcends generations. 95% of Gen Z, 96% of Millennials, and 93% of Gen X workers want to acquire AI skills, while 90% of baby boomers — a demographic usually contemplating retirement — say they would enrol in an AI upskilling course if it was offered.

The research also found that the productivity payoff from an AI-skilled workforce could be immense for India. Surveyed employers expect their organisation’s productivity to increase by 68% as AI technology automates repetitive tasks (71%), encourages learning of new skills (68%), and improves workflow and outcomes (64%). Workers believe AI could raise their efficiency by as much as 66%.

Organisations in India go all-in on AI

The speed of AI transformation happening in India is remarkable. Almost all employers (99%) envision their companies becoming AI-driven organisations by 2028. While most employers (97%) believe their finance department will be the biggest beneficiary, they also foresee IT (96%), research and development (96%), sales and marketing (96%), business operations (95%), human resources (94%), and legal (92%) departments driving significant value from AI too.

“The AI wave is sweeping across the Asia-Pacific region, including India, transforming the way businesses operate and the way we work. Our research shows that society as a whole will benefit from an increased productivity boost, which will translate into higher salaries for skilled workers in India,” said Abhineet Kaul, Director at Access Partnership. “With a growing number of organisations expected to deepen their use of AI solutions and tools, and the continual evolution of AI-driven innovations, there is a need for employers and governments to nurture a proficient workforce capable of steering current and future AI advancements.”

Generative AI—a type of AI that can create new content and ideas quickly, including conversations, stories, images, videos, music, and more—has captured the attention of the general public in the past year. This technology is already transforming workplaces in India where 98% of surveyed employers and workers expect to use generative AI tools on the job within the next five years, with 73% of employers highlighting ‘increasing innovation and creativity’ as the top benefit, followed by improving outcomes (69%), and automating repetitive tasks (68%).

“Generative AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform businesses across India, and this research shows that AI skills are imperative for the future workforce. From financial services to construction and retail, industries are embracing AI at a rapid pace, which is why an AI-skilled workforce is essential to unleashing a culture of innovation and driving productivity in India, aligning with the government of India’s IndiaAI Mission,” said Amit Mehta, Head of AWS Training and Certification, AWS India Private Limited. “At AWS, we are helping organisations such as Wipro, L&T Technology Services, Iris Software, and others, to upskill their employees to be ready for a future powered by generative AI.”

“AI skills are becoming paramount for our customers to innovate and stay competitive. AWS and Wipro are collaborating to train AWS skilled associates at Wipro in generative AI services,” said Ramesh Pai, Vice President, AWS Business Unit Head, Wipro Technologies. “Equipping them with Wipro developer experience platform devNXT.ai, which is integrated with Amazon CodeWhisperer and Amazon Q, helps in accelerating developer productivity and fostering a culture of continuous innovation.”

Bridging India’s AI skills gap is mission-critical

The research reveals a looming AI skills gap which must be bridged to ensure India is well-positioned to unlock the full productivity benefits of AI. Hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority for more than nine in ten (96%) employers in India, of which 79% can’t find the AI talent they need. The research also uncovers a training awareness gap, whereby 91% of employers indicated that they don’t know how to run an AI workforce training program. Meanwhile, 86% of workers said they aren’t sure about relevant career paths where AI skills are useful.

The research highlights the need for greater collaboration between governments, industries, and educators to help employers across India implement AI training programs and guide workers in matching their AI skillsets to the right roles to harness their newly acquired AI capabilities.

“In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, upskilling workers in AI, founded on ethical frameworks and principles, is not just a strategic choice, but a critical imperative for governments and organisations across Asia-Pacific,” said Dr. Rupa Chanda, Director of Trade, Investment and Innovation Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). “This report shows that the future of work demands a workforce equipped with AI proficiency to navigate emerging challenges and harness opportunities for sustainable and equitable economic growth and development as well as inclusive innovation.”

Accelerating digital skills training across India

AWS has trained more than 5.5 million people in India on cloud skills since 2017. But with the rapid adoption of cloud-enabled technologies like AI, more needs to be done to upskill the workforce at scale so organisations can innovate and grow in an AI-dominated future.

In November 2023, Amazon launched the ‘AI Ready’ initiative that complements AWS’s commitment to provide free cloud computing skills training to 29 million individuals globally by 2025. Through ‘AI Ready,’ we now offer a suite of free AI and generative AI training courses, aligned to both technical and non-technical roles, so that anyone can build AI skills. This is in addition to the more than 100 courses and learning resources on AI, machine learning, and generative AI available through AWS Skills Builder and AWS Educate—our digital learning centres for beginners to advanced learners. AWS also announced new generative AI innovations at AWS re:Invent 2023, including Amazon Q—a new generative AI assistant designed for work that can be tailored to businesses.

For more information about our “Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Asia Pacific Workforce for Jobs of the Future” research, download the report here.

About Amazon Web Services

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic regions, with announced plans for 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.