AWS Turns 20: From Cloud Pioneer to AI Contender
A deep look at Amazon Web Services at 20, from its scrappy origins to its evolving AI strategy post-ChatGPT.
Amazon Web Services just hit its 20th anniversary, and GeekWire's Todd Bishop has the definitive profile of the cloud giant's journey from oddball side project to market-dominating behemoth.
In the early days, technical evangelist Jeff Barr was grinding through long hours on the road, pitching what was then a completely novel concept: renting computing power from Amazon. That pitch worked. Spectacularly.
AWS grew into the dominant force in cloud infrastructure, reshaping how the entire tech industry builds and deploys software. But the arrival of ChatGPT disrupted the landscape, forcing AWS to respond and place significant bets on AI.
The profile examines how AWS navigated that disruption and where its AI investments are headed. Two decades in, the company that invented modern cloud computing faces a fundamentally different competitive environment — one where AI capability matters as much as infrastructure scale.