Amazon Names New AWS Chief as AI Race With Microsoft Heats Up

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Amazon.com Inc.'s newly named cloud chief, Matt Garman, inherits a $100-billion-a-year business that's as profitable as it has ever been. He also faces the daunting task of retaining the cloud-computing pioneer's edge in the artificial intelligence age.

A longtime Amazon Web Services engineering leader who was most recently sales chief, Garman, 48, will assume one of the most prominent positions in the technology industry when he succeeds Adam Selipsky next month.

Selipsky, who has led AWS since 2021, will relinquish the role on June 3 “to move onto his next challenge,” Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said in an email to employees on Tuesday. 

The cloud unit, the world's largest seller of rented computing power and data storage, has long accounted for most of Amazon's operating income, serving as a cash machine that gives the parent company flexibility to make big investments in other areas. 

But AWS struggled in the last two years when businesses trimmed their technology spending following pandemic-era splurges. The cloud unit's growth slowed to a record low last year, which executives attributed in part to Amazon's own efforts to help customers save money. The unit held its largest-ever layoffs a year ago and has continued trimming since, even as it continues to hire for specific areas.

The division also stumbled out of the gate in the race to commercialize a new generation of artificial intelligence services, lagging behind rivals Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google in bringing to market the systems that power such products as OpenAI's ChatGPT. 

Early versions of AWS's AI products were deemed insufficient by some customers. Since then, the company has invested $4 billion in Anthropic, a well-regarded builder of generative AI tools. AWS is also building its own tools to rival ChatGPT and has partnered with other companies to power AI services with its servers. 

So while Microsoft and Google are widely seen as leaders in generative AI —