From AWS News Blog · 39 stories
Amazon Bedrock Enhances AI Capabilities with Security and Operational Features
Amazon Bedrock has introduced several updates to improve the security and operational management of AI applications, emphasizing capabilities for multi-tenant AI, data retention policies, and compliance with US government standards. Key features include resource-based policies, managed entitlements for model subscriptions, zero data retention enforcement, and AI model support in AWS GovCloud. These advancements aim to streamline AI adoption across diverse sectors while maintaining security and governance standards.
U.S. Greenlights Public Rollout of OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Amid Regulatory Controls
The U.S. government has approved OpenAI's GPT-5.6 models for public release on July 9, ending a period of limited access due to regulatory scrutiny. The launch of these models, including Sol, Terra, and Luna, follows compliance with federal cybersecurity reviews intended to manage AI model rollouts. This episode highlights the tension between advancing AI capabilities and the increasing regulatory oversight.
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra Achieves High Scores on ARC-AGI-3 Benchmark
OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, its latest AI model, which achieved a 99.9% score on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark using a provider adapter harness. This marks a significant improvement over its predecessor, GPT-5.6 Sol, which scored 7.8%, and demonstrates the model's ability to navigate unfamiliar interactive environments and create symbolic world models.
Claude Mythos 5 AI Cybersecurity Capabilities Expanded, $35M Fund for Open-Source Security
Claude Mythos 5, an AI model for cybersecurity, is now available in Claude Security and will integrate into partner tools. The company also launched a $35 million fund to support open-source software security and plans to expand its Cyber Verification Program. These actions aim to broaden access to advanced AI for defensive cybersecurity while maintaining safeguards against misuse.
Amazon Quick Enhances Efficiency for Finance, Sales, and Supply Chain Management
Amazon Quick, a generative AI assistant, enhances efficiency for AWS Finance, sales teams, Tradeshift, and supply chain operations. It streamlines data preparation, administrative tasks, and analytics processes, allowing organizations to improve productivity and response times across various sectors.
AWS Unveils New AI and Security Features at NYC Summit
Amazon Web Services introduced new AI and security features at the NYC Summit, including Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and AWS Continuum. These updates enhance AI applications and security, offering capabilities for organizational knowledge access and proactive security measures. The announcements indicate a focus on advancing AI operations and cybersecurity strategies.
Amazon CloudWatch Omni Introduces AI-Powered Collaborative Observability
Amazon CloudWatch launched CloudWatch Omni, an AI-powered observability platform for applications and AI agents. Omni integrates OpenTelemetry data, offers a collaborative workspace, and automates service discovery and alarm adjustments, aiming to reduce manual effort in incident investigation.
Amazon S3 Tables now support all Apache Iceberg V3 data types
Amazon S3 Tables now support all data types specified in Apache Iceberg V3, including variant, nanosecond timestamps, geometry, geography, and unknown. This update allows users to create new V3 tables or upgrade existing V2 tables to utilize features like deletion vectors and row lineage, addressing common performance and data management challenges in large analytics datasets.
Amazon S3 Vectors adds metadata pre-filtering for improved recall in filtered searches
Amazon S3 Vectors now supports metadata pre-filtering, which evaluates metadata filters before similarity searches. This change improves recall for filtered queries in applications like semantic search and RAG, ensuring more relevant results are returned when searching specific subsets of data.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk Introduces Cluster Mode for Shared Infrastructure
AWS Elastic Beanstalk launched Cluster Mode, allowing multiple applications to share infrastructure managed by Amazon EKS. This update aims to reduce per-application costs and operational complexity for teams managing a portfolio of applications.
Amazon DynamoDB Adds Real-Time Vector Search Capability
Amazon DynamoDB now supports real-time vector search, allowing users to store vector embeddings alongside operational data and perform similarity searches directly within the database. This integration removes the need for separate vector databases and synchronization pipelines, simplifying application architecture and reducing operational overhead for AI-driven features.
AWS and Google Launch New Sandboxing Environments for Running Untrusted Code
AWS Lambda has introduced MicroVMs, a new serverless compute option offering VM-level isolation for running user-generated code. Concurrently, Google Cloud has launched Cloud Run sandboxes in public preview, enabling safe execution of AI-generated code and untrusted binaries. Both solutions aim to provide secure, isolated environments for a variety of applications.
Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now supports direct querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data
Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now allows direct querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data in data lakes, eliminating the need for ETL processes. This integration simplifies combining operational and historical data, reducing operational complexity and supporting AI applications.
Amazon EventBridge introduces enhanced custom event buses for multi-account event-driven applications
Amazon EventBridge launched enhanced custom event buses to simplify event-driven architectures across multiple AWS accounts. This update allows organizations to deploy a single, centralized event bus, addressing operational complexity and cost issues associated with previous multi-bus configurations.
AWS launches Builder Center mobile apps, Amazon Connect Talent GA, and Corretto 27
AWS has released mobile applications for its Builder Center, making educational content and community features accessible on iOS and Android devices. Additionally, Amazon Connect Talent is now generally available, offering an AI-powered hiring solution, and Amazon Corretto 27 has been released. These updates expand AWS's offerings in developer tools and AI-driven services.
Amazon EC2 T8i Instances with Intel Xeon Scalable Processors Now Generally Available
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made its new low-cost burstable EC2 T8i instances generally available. These instances, powered by custom sixth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, offer up to 30% better price performance than previous T3 instances and are designed for low-to-moderate CPU utilization workloads.
AWS introduces simplified getting started experience for new builders
AWS has launched a new simplified onboarding experience for new users, particularly those working with AI, by offering sensible defaults, identity provider sign-up, and no credit card requirement to start. This change aims to reduce initial configuration hurdles and allow builders to deploy projects faster, with options to activate advanced features as needed.
Amazon EBS Volume Clones now support cross-account copying and re-encryption
Amazon EBS Volume Clones now allow users to copy EBS volumes across different AWS accounts and optionally re-encrypt them with an AWS KMS key in the target account. This feature enables developers to use production data for development and testing in isolated secondary environments.
AWS Graviton5-powered EC2 R9g and R9gd instances are now generally available
Amazon EC2 R9g and R9gd instances, powered by AWS Graviton5 processors, are now generally available, offering up to 25% better compute performance than previous Graviton4-based instances. These new memory-optimized instances provide faster memory, higher network and EBS bandwidth, and a larger L3 cache, making them suitable for memory-intensive workloads like databases and real-time analytics.
Amazon EC2 Celebrates 20th Anniversary, Highlighting Evolution and Expansion
Amazon EC2 marks its 20th anniversary, reflecting on its growth from a single instance type in one region to over 1,200 instance types across 39 regions globally. This milestone highlights EC2's role in shaping cloud computing infrastructure and its continued expansion into new form factors and specialized hardware for AI workloads.
AWS Glue 6.0 Released with 30% Price Reduction and Full Apache Iceberg v3 Support
AWS has released Glue 6.0, which offers a 30% price reduction compared to previous versions and includes full support for Apache Iceberg v3 features. This update provides a modernized runtime with Apache Spark 4.1, Python 3.12, and Scala 2.13, aiming to improve performance and simplify ETL authoring.
Amazon SQS celebrates 20 years with major updates in messaging capabilities
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) launched on July 13, 2006, marking 20 years of service. SQS continues to evolve with significant enhancements in throughput and security, now supporting up to 70,000 transactions per second in select regions, thus addressing the growing complexity of workloads.
Amazon EKS now supports Kubernetes version rollbacks for safer upgrades
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) introduces a version rollback feature for Kubernetes upgrades, allowing administrators to revert to a previous version within seven days if issues arise. This new feature enhances upgrade confidence, addressing concerns over reliability in upgrade procedures, particularly in regulated environments.
AWS launches CloudFormation Express mode to accelerate infrastructure deployments
AWS introduced CloudFormation Express mode, reducing deployment times by up to 4x by bypassing stabilization checks. This enables faster iterative workflows and supports AI-assisted development by allowing quicker feedback loops.
Amazon Launches New EC2 Instances Powered by Graviton5 Processors
Amazon has released new EC2 instances, the M9g, M9gd, C9g, and C9gd, powered by Graviton5 processors. These instances offer substantial performance improvements, with the M9g enhancing MySQL database query performance by 60% and the C9g offering 25% higher performance per vCPU for compute-intensive workloads. This development is significant for businesses utilizing cloud computing, promising improved efficiency and cost management for various applications.
AWS Certificate Manager Adds ACME Support for Automating TLS Certificate Issuance
AWS Certificate Manager now supports the Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol for public TLS certificates, allowing automated issuance and management without manual intervention. This update enables centralized control for PKI administrators and helps organizations streamline certificate management as validity periods shorten.
Amazon EC2 G7 Instances Launch with NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 GPUs
Amazon has launched EC2 G7 instances featuring NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 GPUs, enhancing AI inference and graphics performance. This introduces significant improvements over previous generations, with up to 4.6x AI inference performance and 700 Gbps networking throughput, impacting workloads across AI, rendering, and analytics sectors.
Amazon ECS launches high-resolution metrics for faster service auto scaling
Amazon ECS introduced high-resolution metrics for service auto scaling, enhancing responsiveness to workload demands. The new mechanism reduces the time to scale-out from 363 seconds to 86 seconds, improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness for users.
OpenAI GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and Codex Launched on Amazon Bedrock
Amazon Bedrock now offers OpenAI's GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4 models, and Codex, optimizing AI development workflows. A new console streamlines model selection, while Web Search enhances AI responses with real-time web data. Bedrock's Managed Knowledge Base simplifies enterprise data handling for AI applications.
AWS launches AWS Transform for continuous tech debt management
AWS has announced AWS Transform – continuous modernization, promoting autonomous tech debt analysis and remediation. This tool enables enterprises to manage tech debt at scale with enhanced visibility into codebases and automated remediation processes.
AWS DevOps Agent introduces release management capabilities in preview
AWS DevOps Agent has launched a preview of its release management capabilities, allowing assessment of code changes before production. This update addresses the increased volume of pull requests associated with AI coding tools, enhancing review and testing efficiency to prevent potential issues in deployment.
AWS Security Agent enhances features with threat modeling and code review updates
AWS Security Agent, part of AWS Continuum, now includes threat modeling, advanced code reviews, and support for multiple code repositories. These updates aim to enhance application security throughout the development lifecycle by offering context-aware analysis and vulnerability remediation.
Amazon S3 introduces annotations for enhanced object metadata management
Amazon S3 has launched a new feature called annotations, allowing users to attach up to 1,000 named context annotations per object. This capability facilitates complex metadata management for applications such as AI workflows, making data more accessible and manageable across various industries.
AWS WAF introduces AI traffic monetization for content access by bots
AWS WAF has launched an AI traffic monetization feature, enabling digital content owners to charge AI bots for access to their content. This capability allows publishers to set pricing without altering existing infrastructure and facilitates payment collection in stablecoins, addressing the financial burden of increasing AI bot traffic.
Anthropic Claude Fable 5 launched on AWS with advanced AI capabilities
Anthropic has launched Claude Fable 5 on AWS, featuring Mythos-class capabilities and built-in safeguards. Access to Claude Fable 5 is restricted to comply with US Government export control regulations, limiting its availability to select users.
AWS Releases IoT SDK for Swift, RDS BYOM, and OpenAI Models on Bedrock
AWS announced the general availability of the AWS IoT Device SDK for Swift, enabling MQTT 5 connectivity for Swift developers. Additionally, Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Bring Your Own Media for license reuse, while OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Codex models are available on Amazon Bedrock, enhancing AI development capabilities.
Amazon Cognito introduces multi-Region replication for enhanced application resilience
Amazon Cognito has launched multi-Region replication to ensure consistent user authentication during regional service interruptions. This feature simplifies data management across AWS Regions and eliminates disruptions related to forced password resets and re-authentication when switching regions.
AWS names three new AWS Heroes for September 2026
AWS recognized Avinash Shashikant Dalvi, Joanne Skiles, and Xiaofei Li as new AWS Heroes for September 2026. These individuals are acknowledged for their contributions to the AWS community through knowledge sharing, mentorship, and community building.
AWS to Open New Builder Lofts in Berlin, Hyderabad, and São Paulo
AWS announced plans to open new permanent Builder Lofts in Berlin, Hyderabad, and São Paulo. These spaces will offer free workshops, networking, and co-working areas for developers, students, and tech professionals, expanding on the existing San Francisco location.