Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a $50 billion investment to construct high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure specifically for U.S. government organizations, with the stated aim of expanding their access to advanced AI services.
This initiative targets the addition of 1.3 gigawatts of compute capacity, according to the company. The new infrastructure is intended to broaden government agencies' access to a suite of AWS AI products, including Amazon SageMaker AI, model customization tools, Amazon Bedrock, and model deployment services. Additionally, it will support third-party offerings such as Anthropic's Claude chatbot. Groundbreaking for these data center projects is anticipated in 2026.
AWS CEO Matt Garman stated in a press release that the investment "will fundamentally transform how federal agencies leverage supercomputing." Garman further noted that the initiative is designed to provide agencies with expanded access to AI capabilities, enabling them to "accelerate critical missions from cybersecurity to drug discovery" and to "remove the technology barriers that have held government back." He added that this investment "further positions America to lead in the AI era."
AWS has a history of providing cloud infrastructure to the U.S. government, with operations beginning in 2011. Notable past developments include the launch of AWS Top Secret-East in 2014, identified as the first air-gapped commercial cloud for classified workloads, and AWS Secret Region in 2017, which provides accredited access for various security classifications. The AWS investment follows a growing trend among major technology companies to offer AI services to U.S. federal agencies. OpenAI introduced a version of ChatGPT for federal agencies in January and offered enterprise access for $1 a year in August. Anthropic similarly extended enterprise access to its Claude chatbot for $1 to the U.S. government in the same month, while Google launched "Google for Government" at an initial price of 47 cents for the first year.
