Amazon CEO predicts their cloud platform will lead generative AI boom

Amazon chief executive officer Andy Jassy said his company's cloud infrastructure will become an essential part of the generative artificial intelligence boom.

"While we're building a substantial number of GenAI applications ourselves, the vast majority will ultimately be built by other companies," Jassy said Thursday in the company's annual letter to shareholders. "We're optimistic that much of this world-changing AI will be built on top of AWS."

Read more:  10 most popular industries for interns

Jassy, whose Amazon career began in 1997, became CEO in 2021 when founder Jeff Bezos stepped down and took the role of executive chairman. His tenure has been characterized by rolling layoffs, cost cuts and product shutdowns as the company adjusted to slower growth coming out of the pandemic. That differentiates him from Bezos, who plowed revenue into moonshot projects in between bouts of frugality. 

The company began cutting hundreds of jobs in its Amazon Web Services division in April. In his letter, Jassy said AWS will be at the core of AI applications and models and "help democratize this next seminal phase of AI."

Read more:  AI won't replace managers — but it can make the job better

Jassy has focused the company's investments on a few big initiatives, such as building data centers to help fuel the artificial intelligence boom and efforts to develop an Amazon franchise in groceries and health care. Those were the focus of his letter a year ago. In his first letter to investors as Amazon boss, he pledged to reduce injury rates among the company's workers.

"AI may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud" or possibly the internet, he said in the most recent missive. "The amount of societal and business benefits from the solutions that will be possible will astound us all."

Read more:  10 states with the most workplace discrimination charges

Amazon also added artificial intelligence expertise to its board. Andrew Ng, who helped found Google Brain and was formerly chief scientist for Baidu became a director earlier this week, the company said.