AWS CEO Matt Garman on AI's Enterprise Future and Why Replacing Coders Is a 'Nonstarter'

As artificial intelligence continues to dominate technology conversations, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman offers a pragmatic perspective focused on enterprise value rather than consumer hype. In a recent interview following AWS re:Invent, Garman outlined the company's strategic direction in AI, emphasizing practical applications that deliver measurable business outcomes. This approach contrasts with the flashy consumer-facing AI announcements that have dominated headlines, positioning AWS as the infrastructure backbone for businesses seeking to integrate AI into their operations.

AWS's Enterprise-First AI Strategy

Garman acknowledges that while Amazon hasn't been at the forefront of consumer AI narratives, the company has been investing in AI technologies for over a decade. The recent AWS re:Invent conference marked a significant shift in the company's public AI strategy, with announcements focused on enterprise solutions rather than consumer applications. "Our business is to make sure that banks and health care companies and media and entertainment companies and energy companies can drive their businesses and deliver more outcomes for their customers or cut costs," Garman explained, distinguishing AWS's approach from consumer-focused AI tools like ChatGPT.

The centerpiece of AWS's AI announcements is Nova Forge, a tool that enables what Garman calls "custom pretraining"—allowing companies to integrate their proprietary data during the early stages of model training rather than just fine-tuning existing models. This approach, according to Garman, creates AI models that "deeply understand their data and their domain" in ways that traditional fine-tuning cannot achieve. The technology represents a significant advancement in making frontier AI models accessible to enterprises without requiring the billions of dollars typically needed for model development.

From Chatbots to Agentic AI

Garman distinguishes between the "first generation" of AI tools focused on summarization and content creation and what he sees as the next evolution: agentic AI. "The real value is they can take access to your data—they can still do some summarization and content creation, but they can actually accomplish tasks," he explained. This shift from passive AI tools to active agents capable of reasoning and task completion represents what Garman believes will deliver meaningful business value.

Despite earlier predictions about 2025 being "the year of the agent," Garman notes that the technology has matured significantly. At re:Invent, he asked executives about their AI return on investment and found that "90 percent of the hands went up" when questioned about seeing positive ROI or a clear path to it within six months. This represents a significant shift from a year ago and suggests that enterprise AI is moving from experimentation to implementation.

The Workforce Impact: A Pragmatic View

One of Garman's most notable positions concerns AI's impact on jobs, particularly in software development. He called the idea of replacing junior developers with AI "one of the dumbest ideas" he's heard, explaining that such an approach would be "a nonstarter for anyone who's trying to build a long-term company." His reasoning includes several key points: junior employees often have the most experience with AI tools, they represent the least expensive labor option, and eliminating talent pipelines would ultimately harm organizational health and innovation.

Garman acknowledges that jobs will change significantly, telling AWS employees that "the way that you did your job four years ago is not how you're going to do your job next year." He emphasizes the need for flexibility, new skill development, and different organizational structures. While he expects some job displacement in the short term, Garman believes that "in the medium to longer term, AI will definitely create more jobs than it removes at first," drawing parallels to previous technological revolutions like industrial automation and the internet.

Addressing Environmental and Ethical Concerns

As AI workloads increase energy demands, Garman addresses environmental concerns by highlighting Amazon's position as "the single biggest purchaser of new renewable energy contracts in the world" for the past five years. He emphasizes the company's commitment to "continuously, period over period, year over year, reduce the carbon intensity of the energy that we consume" while acknowledging that nuclear power may become increasingly important for meeting energy needs.

Regarding internal criticism from some Amazon employees who expressed concerns about AI's potential damage to "democracy, to our jobs, and to the Earth," Garman maintains that such views represent a minority perspective. "Most of our employees are excited about the technology we're building," he stated, while acknowledging the company's willingness to listen to respectful concerns from employees with differing viewpoints.

The Path Forward: Delivering Business Value

Looking ahead, Garman predicts that 2026 will focus on "delivering real business returns" rather than experimentation. "It's not going to be about going and experimenting. It's not going and trying new technology. It is really delivering value to the end customers and to the business," he explained. This emphasis on practical outcomes reflects AWS's broader enterprise philosophy and distinguishes its approach from more speculative AI ventures.

The interview reveals a company positioning itself as the practical, business-focused alternative in the AI landscape—one that prioritizes long-term organizational health over short-term workforce reductions and emphasizes measurable business outcomes over technological novelty. As Garman noted, referencing Jeff Bezos, sometimes you have to be "willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time," suggesting that AWS's measured approach to AI may prove strategically sound as the technology matures and businesses seek sustainable implementations.