The latest AWS AI announcements at re:Invent

It’s been full-throttle coverage for theCUBE Research team during our exclusive coverage of AWS re:Invent 2024, and analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) broke down all the breaking news on the latest episode of the CUBE Podcast.

At the event, Amazon Web Services Inc. dropped its holiday charm on the industry with plenty of AWS AI announcements, according to Furrier. It contrasted with how former AWS Chief Executive Officer Adam Selipsky used to run the event.

“Selipsky used to run more of a marketing kind of vibe … this was just old-school blocking and tackling,” Furrier said. “Just a fire hose of gifts, as some people are saying: ‘It’s like Christmas. It’s like the holiday, and all these gifts are coming out. I want to unpack. I want to play with all the new action.’”

No shortage of AWS AI announcements at re:Invent

During the event, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy introduced the Nova models. As a surprise guest, his presence completed changed the energy in the room, according to Furrier.

“He just delivered, because he’s a pro. He’s been doing it forever. Up until two years ago, this was his show, and he was the master at laying down,” Furrier said. “He handled the big announcements and then also flexed a little bit about subtly saying, without saying the cliche, ‘We’ve been doing AI before AI.’ But he was flexing with data.”

AWS re:Invent always features a packed schedule of AWS AI announcements, according to Vellante. There’s not a lot of hand-waving that goes on.

“Even I’ve been saying all week, the SageMaker stuff, to me, is really interesting,” Vellante said. “And they’re like, ‘Hey, we see AI and analytics coming together, because they’re using the same data.’ Then right into the weeds, and people eat it up.”

Thoughts on Intel CEO retirement

Last week, Intel Corp. CEO Pat Gelsinger “retired” amid foundry and growth challenges. Any longtime listener of the CUBE Podcast knows that this has long been a subject of conversation for Furrier and Vellante.

“Intel’s been trying to market its way out of the problem, but you can’t market your way out of the problem of math,” Vellante said.

Intel’s problem started in 2012 when PC volumes peaked, according to Vellante. The real problem started when they passed on the iPhone.

“The reason why those two milestones are really important is because when PC volumes peaked, that set in motion ARM volumes overtaking PC volumes — and they did,” Vellante said. “In semiconductor manufacturing, volumes win. We’ve been saying this over and over and over. Everybody knows Moore’s Law. We talk about Wright’s Law. I’m not going to go into Wright’s Law, but look it up. That’s what the problem was.”

Exclusive interview with Andy Jassy

This week at AWS re:Invent, in addition to his unscheduled appearance, Jassy also sat down for an exclusive interview with theCUBE. It was the only media exclusive one-on-one with Jassy at the conference, according to Furrier.

“We wanted to try to get at the heart of how he’s thinking, why he came back, what’s he mood, is he leaning in, and what he thinks about the next generation of cloud,” Furrier said.

The interview touched on the growth of the AWS business, which happened very quickly, according to Jassy. It took about eight or nine years to build an AWS annual run rate of about $4 billion or so.

“If you look at AI, that’ll happen in just a couple of years,” Jassy said. “It’s growing incredibly quickly, but the reality is they’re very much connected. Because first of all, if you want to use AI, you have to have your data organized and architected in such a way that you can access it.”

It’s nearly impossible to do AI from a mainframe, so companies need to have their infrastructure modernizing the cloud and their data accessible to run AI, according to Jassy. From there, there’s more to consider.

“The reality is that I think you’ve heard us talk for years about, every application is compute,” he said. “Virtually every application is storage. Almost every application is database and analytics and content. Another one of those core building blocks is going to be inference. Every application is going to have sub-generative AI and inference infused in it, so it’s very much a building block.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
Mark Albertson, senior writer at SiliconANGLE Media
Adam Selipsky, former CEO of AWS
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS
Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of database, analytics and machine learning at AWS
Peter Desantis, SVP for AWS Utility Computing Products at AWS
David Brown, VP of compute and networking services at AWS
James Hamilton, SVP and distinguished engineer at Amazon
David Floyer, analyst emeritus at theCUBE Research
Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel
Patrick Moorhead, founder, CEO and chief analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy
Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI
Howie Xu, SVP of engineering and AI/ML at Palo Alto Networks
George Gilbert, principal analyst at theCUBE Research
Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman at MicroStrategy
Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States

Here’s the full theCUBE Pod episode:

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Photo: SiliconANGLE