Summary
AWS CEO Matt Garman sits down with a16z to discuss how Amazon Web Services is building the cloud for the age of AI agents. Garman, who was the first general manager of EC2 in 2006, reflects on AWS’s growth to roughly $170 billion in annual revenue at about 37% growth, and why the business is still in the early stages of cloud migration and AI demand.
The conversation covers the economics of the AI buildout, including AWS’s capital spending of around $220 billion for 2026, its plan to purchase 2 million NVIDIA GPUs over the next couple of years, and how the company balances capacity between the largest frontier labs and younger startups. Garman explains why startups remain central to AWS’s strategy, noting that a significant share of revenue comes from companies that began as startups, and argues that enterprises are already seeing positive returns on AI spending.
Viewers also hear how AWS is thinking about agent-specific infrastructure such as compute sandboxes, gateways, and permissions that distinguish agents from people, along with questions CEOs are asking about AI risk and security. It is a useful look at how the largest cloud provider views demand, investment, and the infrastructure needed for agentic workloads.
📺 Source: a16z · Published October 08, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
