AWS CEO Matt Garman Reflects on AI’s Transformation of Tech Industry
In a candid conversation at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman shared a profound shift in his thinking about the future of technology development. Speaking with Acquired podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, Garman recalled a moment from roughly seven years ago when he identified what he considered an existential challenge for Amazon: the company would eventually need to hire a million software developers to execute its ambitious product roadmap. This talent shortage appeared to be the company’s greatest constraint. However, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has completely transformed this outlook. “Before, we had way more ideas than we could possibly get to,” Garman explained. “Now, because you can deliver things so fast, your constraint is going to be great ideas and great things that you want to go after. And I would never have guessed that 10 years ago.” While Amazon still values skilled software engineers, the productivity multiplier effect of AI means that projects once requiring hundreds of developers can now be accomplished by teams of just five or ten people.
During the conversation, Garman offered rare insights into AWS’s business scale, confirming that Amazon Bedrock—the company’s managed service providing access to AI models for building applications—has already grown into a “multi-billion dollar business.” This marks the first public disclosure of Bedrock’s financial scale and underscores the remarkable growth trajectory of AWS’s AI offerings. Garman also noted that measuring AI’s contribution to AWS has become increasingly challenging as artificial intelligence capabilities become deeply embedded across virtually all aspects of the company’s cloud services. This integration reflects a broader industry trend where AI is no longer a separate technology category but rather a foundational capability woven into the fabric of all computing services.
The AWS chief executive provided a fascinating glimpse into how Amazon approaches its product strategy through a multi-layered framework. At the foundation are core infrastructure components like compute and storage—areas where AWS will always maintain direct offerings. The middle layer encompasses services like databases, analytics engines, and AI models, where AWS pursues a hybrid strategy of offering its own solutions while maintaining a robust partner ecosystem. At the top level sit millions of applications, where AWS is highly selective, building its own offerings only when the company believes it possesses unique expertise that can deliver differentiated value. This strategic approach helps explain how AWS has maintained its cloud market leadership while fostering one of technology’s most vibrant partner ecosystems.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Garman displayed refreshing candor when discussing Amazon’s limitations, particularly when it comes to mimicking competitors. “One of the things that Amazon is particularly bad at is being a fast follower,” he admitted. “When we try to copy someone, we’re just bad at it.” Instead, he emphasized that Amazon finds success when approaching problems from first principles—deeply understanding customer needs and building solutions specifically tailored to address those challenges. This philosophy has guided AWS since its inception, leading to innovative services that often created entirely new categories rather than merely improving upon existing offerings. Garman’s comments suggest this approach remains central to AWS’s innovation strategy even as the company has grown into a dominant technology powerhouse.
The conversation with Garman concluded a two-hour event featuring other prominent technology leaders, including Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters, J.P. Morgan Payments Global Co-Head Max Neukirchen, and Perplexity Co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas. Their collective insights painted a picture of an industry in the midst of profound transformation, with artificial intelligence accelerating the pace of change across sectors from entertainment to financial services to information discovery. What emerged most clearly was that AI isn’t merely adding new capabilities to existing business models—it’s fundamentally changing how companies operate, innovate, and scale their operations. The productivity gains Garman described represent just one dimension of this multifaceted revolution.
Looking ahead, Garman’s revelations suggest a future where the technological constraints that have traditionally limited innovation are increasingly giving way to challenges of imagination and prioritization. As AI systems continue to evolve in their capabilities, the companies that thrive will likely be those that can identify the most valuable problems to solve and marshal their enhanced technological capabilities toward those ends. For AWS, this represents both an opportunity and a challenge—to help its customers navigate this new landscape while continuing to expand its own horizons of innovation. What seems clear is that the transformation has only just begun, with AI-powered development now enabling companies to execute at speeds previously unimaginable, turning what once appeared to be an insurmountable talent gap into a new era of accelerated innovation.
