Amazon’s big bet in AI has been 20 years in the making | CNN Business

Matt Garman helps make your online life – your Starbucks order, your Netflix binge, your Pinterest browsing– possible. As the CEO of Amazon’s cloud computing division, he plays a major role in deciding how to deploy the computing resources needed to drive the internet – a responsibility that could soon include shaping the future of AI. Few people know the business as well as Garman, who sat down with CNN at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters in mid-March. As an intern, he wrote the paper defining Amazon Web Service’s business strategy. And he was AWS’ first product manager when he joined Amazon full time in 2006, helping companies pivot to the web in the internet’s early days. Twenty years after its March 2006 launch, AWS has become crucial for just about any company that relies on internet-powered tools. When AWS goes down, parts of society grind to a halt. That’s big business for Amazon, raking in $128.7 billion in sales last year. But AI has upended the tech industry. Amazon’s already making major changes, like ratcheting up AI infrastructure spending to an expected $200 billion this year and axing tens of thousands of jobs. Garman explained why Amazon views the m