As companies struggle to integrate AI, they’re increasingly ready to bring in outside help — and service providers are launching new teams specifically designed to make sure they get it.
On Tuesday, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a new internal organization for future engineers with a focus on artificial intelligence. The new team’s engineers will integrate with companies to develop purpose-built agents, focusing on rapid engagements and customer self-sufficiency.
In a post announcing the new organization, AWS Vice President of Frontier AI Francessca Vasquez emphasized that the organization would do more than build and maintain the required systems. “Customers are leaving AWS FDE deployments with both new solutions and new engineering capabilities,” the release said. “With agent systems running in their own AWS environment, they gain permanent AI skills, workflows and patterns that they can use to innovate independently.”
Amazon says $1 billion will be committed to the new organization, though the number represents Amazon’s internal resources rather than a joint venture or contractual investment.
Pioneered by Palantir, the forward development engineer (FDE) model has become increasingly popular as a way to manage AI deployments. In a typical FDE system, an engineer from the outsourcing company (in this case, AWS) works temporarily for the customer while building the system, allowing them to respond quickly as internal opportunities or challenges arise.
In the FDE model, much of the relevant technology can be reused between deployments while still being tailored to the specifics of each company’s needs and workflows. It also provides the client company with an input of know-how and places the primary responsibility for development in the hands of the contractor. The biggest downside is manpower, as it means maintaining a full corps of FDE engineers to install and maintain the company’s technology.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have launched their own FDE ventures in recent months, valued at $4 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively. In these two cases, the AI labs were paired with private equity firms, which provided both the start-up capital and the connections to client companies in their portfolios.
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