AWS chief urges faster product rollouts at Reinvent; internal preview of new agentic AI flagged

Amazon Web Services chief Matt Garman chastised staff for slow product rollouts at the company's Reinvent conference, saying it is valuable only if AWS can actually launch new offerings rather than merely pre-announcing them. The remarks surfaced from an internal Reinvent-focused meeting whose transcript was reviewed by Reuters. AWS’s annual Las Vegas event is traditionally the stage for its most ambitious product unveilings, such as last year’s Nova chatbot that pitted AWS against OpenAI and other AI rivals. "Increasingly, we’re finding that when we launch innovative new things at Reinvent it’s valuable if we can actually launch them, as opposed to just pre-announce them," Garman said. "Customers want to be able to use our products when we talk about them, and we find that when we’re slow and coming out with products, you lose some of that buzz."

It was unclear which products Garman was referencing. "Reuters is grossly misinterpreting a second hand account of what was an inspiring internal conversation where we encouraged the team to work hard to keep delivering meaningful value to customers at Reinvent, just as we do every year," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. Amazon has faced questions about its pace in AI product development, with one earnings call in which a Morgan Stanley analyst pressed Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on a narrative that AWS is lagging in genAI and losing share to peers. Jassy defended the company, saying AI is still in the early stages and there will be multiple winners.

Garman continued to press for urgency, stressing that the first and most important thing is to deliver on the roadmap. He also underscored the importance of in-person attendance at Reinvent, telling staff that the conference is "not interesting if customers aren’t there." The goal, he said, is to attract more than 60,000 attendees, roughly matching last year’s total.

During the meeting, Garman demonstrated a new internal testing product called Quick, described as an agentic form of AI that can perform tasks with minimal or no prompting. He said Quick can analyze a variety of documents and web pages to boost productivity and that users can build customized workflows for routine tasks to automate them. Quick will be available to all AWS employees for testing in the near term.

The showcase of Quick comes as AWS accelerates its AI strategy amid a crowded field of cloud and AI rivals. AWS has faced scrutiny over whether it is keeping pace with generative AI offerings from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and other rivals, prompting executives to emphasize practical, enterprise-focused AI features rather than solely headline-grabbing demos.

Analysts have noted that the AI landscape is evolving rapidly and that early leadership may be defined by the breadth of services and the ease with which customers can integrate AI into their workflows. Jassy has argued that AI will yield multiple winners, and that the market is still in a formative stage. An earnings-season debate about AWS’s AI trajectory has kept investors’ attention on Reinvent, where the company traditionally sets the tone for the year ahead in cloud computing and AI product development.

AWS has also stressed that its AI progress must translate into tangible customer value and robust security, governance, and compliance frameworks to appeal to enterprise buyers. As Reinvent unfolds, the company’s leaders expect to roll out more services and refinements tied to AI workloads, data management, and developer tools, with an emphasis on real-world use cases rather than theoretical capabilities.

The event comes as AWS tries to balance the speed of innovation with the risk of overpromising—issues that have shadowed the company’s AI branding in recent quarters. Reinvent has historically served as a high-profile stage for AWS to demonstrate momentum in a competitive AI landscape, and this year’s messaging centers on delivering reliable, scalable AI-enabled services for customers who require production-ready deployments.

In briefing investors and partners, AWS officials have highlighted ongoing investments in AI infrastructure, including specialized chips, model optimization, and safer, more controllable AI experiences. The emphasis on delivery after a year marked by ambitious announcements reflects a strategic pivot toward operational excellence and customer-centric execution, in line with the broader industry push to monetize AI through practical, day-to-day business applications.

As Reinvent progresses, stakeholders will be watching not only for new tools but also for evidence that AWS can sustain supply, reliability, and customer adoption at scale while continuing to compete for talent and mindshare in a rapidly evolving AI ecosystem.