Amazon Web Services said on June 30 it would invest US$1 billion in a new Forward Deployed Engineering unit to help customers build and deploy AI systems.

AWS said the unit would start with “thousands” of engineers, who would work in teams of about five or six inside customer organizations.

Forward-deployed engineering, a model Palantir coined more than a decade ago, places engineers inside a client’s operations to speed up technical deployment instead of relying on standard ticket-based support.

The move builds on AWS’ existing AI services.

The company already offers advisory work, custom development, forward-deployed engineering, and partner support through its Generative AI Innovation Center.

AWS also said 65% of more than 1,000 customer AI initiatives had moved from proof of concept to production.

The announcement follows a broader industry push after Anthropic formed an AI services company and OpenAI launched the OpenAI Deployment Company earlier this year.

🔗 Source: Amazon