Amazon AWS CEO Calls Out Staff for Lagging Product Rollouts

According to reports, Amazon Web Services CEO chastised employees for what he described as the cloud computing company's sluggish product rollouts during its December Reinvent customer event. At the yearly conference in Las Vegas, the Amazon division usually unveils its most ambitious new goods and services. For example, AWS showcased its Nova chatbot last year, competing with OpenAI and other AI competitors.

Key Highlights

• AWS CEO Matt Garman reprimanded staff for slow product releases, urging readiness ahead of Reinvent.
• He unveiled an internal AI tool “Quick” and emphasized launching usable products, not just announcements.

At an internal all-hands meeting, Matt Garman stated, "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."

"When we talk about our products, customers want to be able to use them, and we find that you lose some of that buzz when you're slow to release new products." Which products Garman was referring to was not clear.

According to a statement from an Amazon representative, "Reuters is wildly 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."

Amazon has been battling a reputation for lagging behind competitors in the creation of artificial intelligence products. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was questioned by a Morgan Stanley analyst during the company's most recent earnings call regarding the Wall Street narrative that "AWS is falling behind in genAI with concerns about share loss to peers."

In an unusual eight-minute rebuttal, Jassy defended the company, claiming that there would be multiple winners and that AI was still in its infancy.

On Thursday, however, Garman pressed his staff. "The first and very most important thing we've got to do is make sure that we deliver on the roadmap that we have," he stated.

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Additionally, Garman urged employees to make sure that AWS clients physically attend Reinvent, adding that the December 1–5 conference is "not interesting if customers aren't there." Garman stated that the objective is to have more than 60,000 people present, which would approximately equal the number from the previous year.

During the meeting, Garman presented Quick, a new internal testing product that uses "agentic" AI—that is, AI that can complete tasks with little to no human intervention.

He claimed that it can enhance productivity by analyzing a range of documents and webpages. "You can actually build customized workflows for things that you do on a regular basis that you can automate." According to him, all AWS workers will soon be able to test Quick.