Amazon Web Services

AWS is Amazon's cloud business. It started out renting servers, and in the AI era it also acts as a storefront selling other companies' models. That storefront is called Bedrock.

This is where most of the confusion happens. Just because Bedrock offers Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT doesn't mean AWS built them. It's the same as a department store carrying a luxury brand's handbags without having made those bags itself. The only things AWS actually builds itself are its own model, called Nova, and its own chip, called Trainium.

So when you read a story about AWS, you always have to ask: "Did Amazon build this, or just put it on the shelf?" Nova and the chips are things it built. Most of the other well-known models are things it's just carrying.

2026 brought two changes. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 landed on the Bedrock shelf too, moving the industry a step closer to "any model on any cloud." And the center of gravity is shifting from selling models to the infrastructure for running agents (AgentCore). August's news about always-on compute for keeping agents running for long stretches, and built-in web search by default, are part of that shift.

"AWS supports GPT" doesn't mean AWS built GPT — it means OpenAI's models are now also available to use on AWS's cloud.