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

Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s biggest conference of the year is just around the corner and all signs point to it being an eventful one. AWS re:Invent 2024 starts on Sunday in Las Vegas. The meetings are scheduled to last until December 6th. A keynote address with AWS CEO Matt Garman will take place on December 3rd at 8 a.m. PT sharp.

AWS plans to make a live stream of the keynote available on YouTube, and we will cover everything that is announced on stage. Keep an eye out for this and also for our stories that emerge as re:Invent progresses.

Notably, this is Garman’s first re:Invent as CEO of AWS. His predecessor, Adam Selipsky, resigned in May after just three years at the helm.

So what can we expect?

Garman must contend with the market perception that AWS continues to lag behind Microsoft and Google in the generative AI race. AWS has launched a number of generative AI services in recent months, and the company says its generative AI revenue has reached “multi-billions” of dollars.

In another win, just weeks ago, AWS solidified its partnership with Anthropic by becoming the AI ​​company’s primary model training partner and agreeing to let Anthropic’s team lead its future AI chip design efforts.

But AWS has also faced setbacks, such as the departure of top AI executive Matt Wood and delays to its flagship Olympus model.

Garman will almost certainly talk about generative AI in 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’ll have innovation across the stack in compute and storage and databases, analytics and AI,” he said in an interview. “It will impact the entire AWS stack.”

Expect a cameo from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy during Garman’s keynote, the topic of which Amazon rather bombastically describes as: “Highlighting how AWS is reinventing fundamental building blocks and developing new experiences to benefit customers and partners.” to give them what they need to build a better future.”

AWS Vice President Swami Sivasubramanian will give an AI and data-focused presentation on new AWS services on December 4th. And on December 5th, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels will dive deep into his tech predictions for the coming year – a long-time staple of re:Invent.

Sivasubramanian and Vogels’ speeches, like Garman’s, will be streamed on YouTube – and we’ll be covering them here on TechCrunch.