Amazon Web Services Inc. reportedly is set to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft Corp. and Google Cloud and launch a dedicated marketplace for artificial intelligence agents, and its favorite AI developer Anthropic PBC is set to be one of its launch partners.
A report by News, which cites two anonymous sources familiar with AWS’s plans, said the company is expected to make an announcement at next week’s AWS Summit in New York City, a two-day event that kicks off on July 15.
AI agents are the biggest buzzword in the technology industry right now, representing the next step up from generative AI. Although there’s no widely accepted definition of the term, AI agents are systems that are designed to work autonomously and proactively, completing tasks on behalf of human users with minimal supervision. They’re powered by large language models such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-4o, and can use logic to make decisions independently, while taking into account the context of the situation they’re operating in.
Some examples of AI agents include those that operate self-driving cars, using sensors to navigate roads and traffic safely, or call center agents that can communicate with customers and process refunds on their behalf, without needing to involve a human agent.
Although AI agents only really became a thing last year, they have generated tremendous excitement, and almost every AI developer is laser-focused on their development. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has made it clear on more than one occasion that agentic AI is the next big thing for AI, and so has just about every other personality in the industry.
That said, most AI companies today sell their AI agents and related services in silos, and that causes a lot of fragmentation, preventing their widespread adoption. By creating a dedicated marketplace through which multiple AI firms can advertise their AI agents, AWS will make it much easier for its customers to browse through what’s on offer, find the agents they need, and deploy them in their cloud computing environments.
Anthropic and other partners will be able to charge for access to their AI agents. According to one of the sources, AWS intends to operate the marketplace on a software-as-a-service model, giving developers the flexibility to choose from subscription-based or usage-based pricing. Of course, AWS will want a cut of the profits generated by these AI agents, but News’s source said its fees will be somewhat “minimal” considering the amount of revenue they can potentially unlock.
The partnership makes a lot of sense for Anthropic, because AWS is the world’s most popular cloud infrastructure platform. It can help the company to put its agentic AI offerings in front of thousands of new customers, including many that currently use its rivals’ services. In turn, its exposure there may also tempt more developers to explore its application programming interface, which allows them to create their own AI agents.
It’s a good move for AWS too, not only because Anthropic’s models are considered among the best in the business, but because it also happens to be one of the startup’s main investors, having thrown an eye-watering $13.8 billion at it so far. It’s likely to invest even more in the company soon – just yesterday, News reported that Amazon executives were holding further discussions with Anthropic, though no exact numbers were mentioned.
AWS is also Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, giving it access to hundreds of thousands of graphics processing units to train and run its AI models.
Amazon’s proposed AI agent marketplace will compete with similar offerings from Google Cloud and Microsoft. In April, Google launched an AI Agent Marketplace for businesses to list, buy and sell AI agents, and one month later Microsoft followed up with the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store. The likes of Salesforce Inc. and ServiceNow Inc. also operate agentic AI marketplaces.
Image: News/Dreamina
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