AWS re:Invent was an all-in pitch for AI. Customers might not be ready.

Summary

If Amazon Web Services’ annual re:Invent tech conference proves anything, it’s that the cloud infrastructure player is going all in on AI. AWS announced made dozens of announcements from new AI agents and updated large language models, to products with LLM and agent-building capabilities. AI for enterprise was everywhere. But are its customers just as eager? AWS CEO Matt Garman acknowledged during his keynote that enterprises haven’t seen a return on AI investment yet. He thinks that’s about to change — and fast. “I believe that the advent of AI agents has brought us to an inflection point in AI’s trajectory,” Garman said. “It’s turning from a technical wonder into something that delivers us real value. This change is going to have as much impact on your business as the internet or the cloud.” While analysts told TechCrunch they were impressed by some of AWS’ tech announcements this week, they aren’t sure it’s enough to move the needle on enterprise AI adoption or change AWS’ position in the AI race. AWS is one of the market leaders when it comes to cloud infrastructure; the same can’t be said for its enterprise AI offerings. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google hold a commanding lead when it comes to enterprise market share for actual AI models. AWS does have the advantage of having everything in house, including infrastructure and its own AI training chips. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 Naveen Chhabra, a principal analyst at Forrester, told TechCrunch over email that while AWS announced a lot of cool new technology, it doesn’t change the fact that many enterprises aren’t ready to adopt AI. “AWS AI announcements show that AWS is thinking ahead and maybe far too ahead,” Chhabra wrote. “Most enterprises are still piloting AI projects and are rarely at the levels of maturity AWS expects them to be to take advantage of the offerings that come out of these announcements.” A widely cited MIT study from August found that 95% of enterprises aren’t seeing a ...