AWS re:Invent 2024: Amazon's Cloud Computing Conference Spotlights AI Advancements and Industry Challenges

AWS re:Invent 2024: What to expect and how to watch Amazon's biggest event of the year

Amazon Web Services' (AWS) biggest conference of the year has begun, and all signs point to it being an eventful one. AWS re:Invent 2024 kicked off in Las Vegas on Sunday, with sessions scheduled to run through December 6. A keynote address featuring AWS CEO Matt Garman will take place December 3, starting at 8 a.m. PT sharp. AWS plans to make a livestream of the keynote available on YouTube, and we'll be covering everything that's announced onstage. Keep your eyes peeled for that, as well as for our stories popping up throughout the course of re:Invent. Notably, this is Garman's first re:Invent as AWS' CEO. His predecessor, Adam Selipsky, stepped down in May after just three years at the helm. So what can we expect? Garman must deal with a market perception that AWS continues to trail Microsoft and Google in the generative AI race. AWS has introduced a number of generative AI services in recent months, and the company claims that its revenue from generative AI has reached "multiple billions" of dollars. In another win, AWS just weeks ago shored up its partnership with Anthropic by becoming the AI company's primary model training partner and by agreeing to have Anthropic's team help guide its future AI chip design efforts. But AWS has also faced setbacks, like the departure of top AI exec Matt Wood and delays of its flagship Olympus model. Garman will almost certainly talk about generative AI during his keynote. (The re:Invent catalog lists over 500 generative AI-related sessions.) But he told TechCrunch in October that re:Invent wouldn't be "just an AI conference" this year. "I think we're going to have innovations across the stack in compute and storage and databases and analytics and AI," he said in an interview. "It's going to be across the whole stack of AWS." Expect a cameo from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy during Garman's keynote, the theme of which Amazon rather bombastically describes as "highlighting how AWS is reinventing foundational building blocks as well as developing new experiences to empower customers and partners with what they need to build a better future." AWS VP Swami Sivasubramanian will give an AI- and data-focused presentation on new AWS services on December 4. And December 5, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels will dive deep into his tech predictions for the coming year -- a longtime regular fixture of re:Invent. Sivasubramanian and Vogels' speeches, like Garman's, will be streamed on YouTube -- and we'll be covering them right here on TechCrunch.

AWS re:Invent 2024: Live updates from Amazon's biggest event

Amazon's re:invent 2024 conference returns to Las Vegas for a series of reveals and keynotes through December 6. AI is expected to be the focus of the event, but there's plenty more in store for Amazon Web Services users, which you can follow live below throughout the week. Amazon's largest enterprise event of the year is underway, and if you didn't make it to Las Vegas this year, you still have options. You can follow along with this live blog, get caught up on our re:Invent 2024 preview or you can actually livestream the biggest talks from re:Invent 2024 by signing up with Amazon right here. That livestream kicks off Monday at 7:30 p.m. PT with Senior Vice President of AWS Utility Computing Peter DeSantis. But for the most prominent keynote, you'll have to wait until Tuesday at 8 a.m. PT, when AWS CEO Matt Garman takes center stage in an address that will additionally be livestreamed via its YouTube channel. As noted by our AI reporter Kyle Wiggers: "Garman must deal with a market perception that AWS continues to trail Microsoft and Google in the generative AI race," amid a mixed bag of recent wins with Anthropic and losses in executive leadership and delays of its Olympus model. Amazon has already made several announcements ahead of the event, including the launch of the AWS Security Incident Response service to reduce business recovery times following cyberattacks, a switch to using liquid cooling throughout its AI servers, and its Data Transfer Terminals, which are physical locations where customers can upload to the cloud in person.