Amazon Web Services is bolstering a business unit that helps clients with cloud-powered machine learning projects.

The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, as the unit is called, was formed two years ago with a $100 million investment. It has since completed consulting engagements for thousands of customers. Last week, AWS announced that it will invest another $100 million to enhance the unit’s AI capabilities and expand its partnerships with key industry players.

Many companies bring in a consultancy to help with their AI projects because the alternative, assembling an in-house machine learning team, can be prohibitively difficult. Competition over AI talent between the major LLM providers has driven up recruiting costs. Plus, hiring the professionals necessary for a machine learning project takes time. A consultancy can get to work as soon as the contract is signed.

AWS Generative AI Innovation Center projects often start with a one-hour discovery call. According to the cloud provider, those discussions help establish the client’s business requirements. AWS personnel also use the opportunity to identify the client-side stakeholders who will have to be looped in to move the project forward.

According to the cloud provider, its staffers can define a high-level plan of action for proposed AI projects. If needed, AWS can also take over the hands-on implementation work. The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center provides clients with access to AI engineers, data scientists and other technical professionals.

When necessary, the cloud provider brings in talent from consulting partners. “To help more customers, we launched the AWS Generative AI Partner Innovation Alliance, a carefully selected (and growing) global network of systems integrators and consulting firms,” an AWS spokesperson told Boardroom Insight. The program currently has 19 participants, up from 9 last November. The list includes big names such as Capgemini and Slalom.

The AWS spokesperson further elaborated that participating partners use methodologies and technical assets provided by the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center. According to the company, those resources are designed to streamline the process of taking AI projects from the experimentation phase to production.

One of the tasks with which the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center can help clients is customizing LLMs. The unit maps out project requirements, prepares training data and defines the metrics with which model performance should be measured. AWS says that its staffers can deliver a deployable solution in as little as 45 days.

Some of the $100 million that the cloud provider is investing in the unit will go towards expanding its work with partners. The initiative will place particular emphasis on startup collaborations. AWS is also enhancing the center’s AI agent development capabilities, as well as its “forward deployed engineering” programs. The company spokesperson explained that “forward deployed means the center’s team works with customers in-person, on-site” to support customer projects. 

The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center counts Formula 1, Nasdaq and BMW Group among its clients.

Photo courtesy of AWS