Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not want to depend entirely on its sales team to sell artificial intelligence (AI) apps, a report claims. The world’s largest cloud service provider is reportedly aiming to gain organic traction among developers and reduce its reliance on traditional sales teams for its AI products. This strategy shift comes after an internal Amazon document obtained by Business Insider (whichBI) indicated that AWS’s coding assistant, Q Developer, has struggled to gain grassroots adoption compared to rivals like Cursor and Windsurf. The document noted that while Q Developer had seen “occasional successes” in selling directly to senior executives, those sales, however, required “intensive sales involvement.” This also contrasts with the early years of AWS, during which cloud services were adopted organically among developers.
How Amazon is planning to sell its AI products more organically
To address the gap, AWS recently launched Kiro, an AI coding assistant specifically designed to attract more self-serve developers. The internal document acknowledged that “Until recently, AWS did not have a compelling product for the ‘grassroots’ cohort.” Larger enterprise customers, the document stated, currently tend to favour Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.AWS’ plans also highlight an ongoing debate in software sales, whether to sell directly to top executives or start with individual users and scale up. Traditionally, companies targeted senior decision-makers, but the rise of cloud services like AWS and viral apps like Slack and Zoom popularised a bottom-up model. In the AI era, this approach is even more critical, as seen with the rapid organic growth of ChatGPT and Cursor.Meanwhile, in a statement to BI, an AWS spokesperson said all sales channels are important and noted that many developers use AWS before their companies adopt it. They added that Q Developer’s usage has grown “9-fold per person” this year.“We have the pleasure of serving an incredibly diverse community of builders with different technology needs and we’re focused on meeting customers wherever they are on their journey, whether through individual developer adoption or enterprise-wide implementation,” the spokesperson noted.
The Q apps are key to AWS’s AI strategy, which was showcased at the company’s 2023 re:Invent conference and represents a significant portion of its AI portfolio. AWS relies on them to demonstrate to investors that it’s staying competitive as Microsoft and Google advance. However, Q Developer currently earns only a small share of what rivals like Cursor and Windsurf make. AWS also plans to speed up Q Business chatbot sales by adopting a user-led model after upgrading to an internal AI platform called Quick. AWS has also received positive early feedback on Kiro since its July launch, but plans to add “enterprise-ready” features after users requested more control. However, some employees remain sceptical about Q’s future, saying AWS excels more in infrastructure than in business apps.The AWS spokesperson dismissed the claims, saying that it is “not correct” that the company hasn’t succeeded beyond infrastructure, pointing to products like Bedrock, Connect, and SageMaker.“We are the top leader, or leader of leaders, on all calibrations of measurement in hundreds of third-party evaluations each year, and no one else is even close,” the spokesperson added..
