A couple of editions ago I wrote about what I find so energizing about working with startups. Last week I got a fresh dose of it: I spent a few days with the AWS Startups team, listening to stories of founders talking about the problems they’re actually solving. One story that stayed with me came from Marco Negreiros, founder of EyeCare Health, a Brazilian healthtech expanding access to eye care. He shared a striking fact: more than 70% of Brazilian municipalities don’t have a single ophthalmologist. His answer was to put a vision test on the one device almost everyone already carries, the smartphone, so a basic eye screening no longer depends on living near a clinic. Watching a founder turn a gap that big into something that concrete is exactly why I love this space.

This week, I’ll take a closer look at some key launches, and then cover the quarterly AWS Service Availability updates.

Last week’s launches
Here are some of the launches covered from this past week in the AWS News Blog:

• Amazon EC2 C9g and C9gd instances powered by AWS Graviton5 processors: They deliver up to 25% better compute performance than Graviton4-based instances, 5x larger cache, fastest memory of any processor instances in the cloud, and local NVMe storage options (C9gd).
• A new AWS CloudFormation Express mode: You can speed up infrastructure deployment with AWS CloudFormation Express mode, enabling AI agents and developers to receive deployment confirmation in seconds and iterate faster. Available in all commercial Regions at no additional cost.
• Upgrade Amazon EKS clusters with confidence using Kubernetes version rollbacks: Learn how Kubernetes version rollbacks for Amazon EKS let you reverse cluster upgrades within seven days. This new feature provides a safety net for upgrade failures, no cluster rebuilds required, turning Kubernetes version upgrades into a reversible, low-risk operation.
• Automate public TLS certificate issuance with ACME support in AWS Certificate Manager: AWS Certificate Manager now supports the ACME protocol, so you can automate the issuance and renewal of public TLS certificates using standard, widely adopted tooling.

Here are some launches and updates that caught my attention:

• Claude Sonnet 5 is now available on AWS – Anthropic’s most capable Sonnet model brings top-tier intelligence at Sonnet pricing for coding, agents, and everyday professional work at scale. It navigates large codebases, calls tools precisely, and holds state across long agentic tasks. To learn more, visit the AI Blog post.
• Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents is now generally available: AI agents can now securely access and operate desktop applications through managed WorkSpaces environments, without requiring application modernization or custom integrations. To learn more. visit the Desktop and Application Streaming Blog post.
• Amazon OpenSearch Service is now optimized for log analytics: This release introduces a new engine purpose-built for log analytics workloads that delivers up to 4x better price-performance on internal benchmarks, while keeping the full-text search capabilities OpenSearch is known for. Teams can now get aggregations and precise text search in one place. To learn more, visit the Big Data Blog post.
• Amazon SageMaker AI cuts generative AI inference scale-out time by up to half: SageMaker Inference now supports container image caching, enabling up to 2x faster end-to-end scaling for generative AI models during scale-out events. To learn more, visit the AI Blog post.
• Amazon CloudWatch supports creating alarms from log queries : You can now create alarms directly on log query results and set thresholds in a single workflow, eliminating the need to first create metric filters or custom metrics as intermediate steps.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

AWS Service Availability Updates
When the availability of an AWS service or feature changes, we provide customers guidance in AWS Product Lifecycle Changes on available alternatives and support for migration so that disruptions to your operations are minimized. The following lifecycle changes were updated on June 30, 2026.

Services moving to Maintenance (no longer accessible to new customers starting July 30, 2026):

• Amazon Bedrock Agents (launched November 2023) is now Amazon Bedrock Agents Classic
• Amazon Cognito Sync
• Amazon Kendra
• Amazon Q Business
• AWS Directory Service – Simple AD
• AWS IoT Device Defender – Detect (feature will no longer be accessible to new customers starting August 31, 2026)
• AWS Mainframe Modernization – Self-Managed Experience
• AWS Management Console – myApplications
• AWS Resource Groups – Group Lifecycle Events
• AWS Service Catalog – Application Registry
• AWS Systems Manager – Application Manager
• Amazon SageMaker AI features: A2I, Clarify, Debugger, GeoSpatial, Ground Truth, Mechanical Turk, Model Monitor, Role Manager, and Studio Lab

Services entering Sunset:

• Amazon WorkSpaces – PCoIP
• Amazon WorkSpaces – Pool
• AWS Managed Services (AMS) Advanced
• AWS re:Post Private
• Amazon Sagemaker AI- Profiler

Services reaching End of Support (as of June 30, 2026):

• Amazon Chime SDK – Carrier Voice Focus
• Amazon SageMaker AI – Ground Truth Plus

We understand that changes in availability can impact your operations. For specific guidance, consult the relevant service documentation or contact AWS Support.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits – AWS Summits are free events that bring the cloud and AI community together to connect, learn, and explore the latest technologies. Browse the full calendar to find a Summit near you in the second half of 2026.
• AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders. If you’re in Latin America, don’t miss AWS Community Day Belo Horizonte on August 22. Registration is open at awscommunityday.com.br.

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

– Daniel Abib

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

This week, the AWS IoT Device SDK for Swift reached general availability. As a member of the Swift Server Workgroup (SSWG), this one caught my attention. The SDK brings production-ready MQTT 5 connectivity, Device Shadow, Jobs, and fleet provisioning to Swift developers on macOS, iOS, tvOS, and Linux.

I’m curious to see what you will build with it. Swift on the server has matured over the past few years, and now it reaches IoT devices too. This connects to a broader trend of running Swift at the edge. WendyOS, for example, is an open-source operating system for physical AI that offers first-class Swift support for deploying apps to NVIDIA Jetson and Raspberry Pi hardware. Between server-side Swift, IoT, and edge computing, the language is showing up in places that would have surprised most people a few years ago.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news.

Headlines
Amazon RDS for SQL Server supports Bring Your Own Media – Customers who migrate SQL Server applications from on-premises environments can now reuse their existing Microsoft SQL Server licenses, including Software Assurance, through Microsoft’s License Mobility program on Amazon RDS. BYOM is integrated with AWS License Manager for tracking license usage and compliance. Read more.

Amazon Cognito now supports multi-Region replication – You can now synchronize user and machine identity data, including credentials, user pool configurations, and federation setups, to a secondary user pool in a standby Region in near real-time. In the event of a disruption in the primary Region, signed-in users continue accessing their applications without re-authenticating, and registered users can sign in with their existing credentials. Multi-Region replication is available as an add-on for user pools in Essentials or Plus feature tiers across 16 Regions. Read more.

GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and Codex from OpenAI are now generally available on Amazon Bedrock – You can now use GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.4 in production workloads on Amazon Bedrock and build with Codex for AI-powered software development, with the same security, governance, and operational controls you already use across AWS. GPT-5.5 is the most capable model from OpenAI, excelling at agentic coding, data analysis, and multi-step autonomous tasks. Codex is available through the Codex App, the Codex CLI, and IDE integrations with Visual Studio Code, JetBrains, and Xcode. Pricing matches OpenAI first-party rates, and usage counts toward existing AWS commitments. Read more.

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

• Amazon Bedrock adds CloudWatch metrics for OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible APIs – You can now monitor inference traffic to the bedrock-mantle endpoint with CloudWatch metrics, including inference counts, input and output token totals, and client error counts at account, project, model, and project-and-model granularity.
• Amazon Bedrock launches a redesigned console optimized for OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible APIs – A refreshed console workflow with a model catalog, side-by-side comparison, project-based organization, and project-aware documentation with pre-filled code snippets.
• Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity now supports bring-your-own secrets with AWS Secrets Manager – Customers can now reference existing AWS Secrets Manager secret ARNs in AgentCore Identity Credential Providers, enabling full ownership of secrets governance including custom CMKs, tagging strategies, and automatic rotation.
• AWS Step Functions adds AgentCore-powered agentic reasoning step – You can now add AI agent reasoning steps to your Step Functions workflows through an integration with the managed harness in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore. Run multiple agents in parallel or sequence, add human approval, and trace every agent decision.
• Amazon EKS and Amazon EKS Distro now support Kubernetes version 1.36 – Kubernetes 1.36 promotes User Namespaces to GA, introduces Mutating Admission Policies, In-Place Pod-Level Resources Vertical Scaling, and Resource Health Status reporting. Available in all Regions where EKS is available.
• Amazon ECS Managed Instances now supports AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia – You can now create an ECS Managed Instances capacity provider with Inferentia2, Trainium1, and Trainium2 instance types and have Amazon ECS automatically allocate all accelerator resources to your workload.
• Amazon Quick now supports VPC connectivity for MCP connections – Enterprise customers can now connect privately hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to Amazon Quick through VPC, enabling secure access to proprietary applications and internal tools without exposing them to the internet.
• AWS Cost and Usage Report 2.0 now supports Athena and Redshift integration – CUR 2.0 exports are automatically delivered in the optimal format for your chosen query engine, with supporting infrastructure templates, table definitions, and data loading instructions.
• Amazon Location Service announces public transit and intermodal routing – The Routes API now supports two new travel modes, Transit and Intermodal, to plan journeys combining public transportation with walking, driving, taxi, and rental segments across 13 Regions.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events
Learn more about AWS, browse and join upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events as well as AWS Summits and AWS Community Days. Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— seb

I joined AWS in 2021, and since then I’ve watched the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance family grow at a pace that still surprises me. From AWS Graviton-powered instances to specialized accelerated computing options, it feels like every few months there’s a new instance type landing that pushes performance boundaries further. As of February 2026, AWS offers over 1,160 Amazon EC2 instance types, and that number keeps climbing.

This week’s opening news is a good example: The general availability of Amazon EC2 M8azn instances. These are general purpose, high-frequency, high-network instances powered by fifth generation AMD EPYC processors, offering the highest maximum CPU frequency in the cloud at 5 GHz. Compared to the previous generation M5zn instances, M8azn instances deliver up to 2x compute performance, 4.3x higher memory bandwidth, and a 10x larger L3 cache. They also provide up to 2x networking throughput and up to 3x Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) throughput compared with M5zn.

Built on the AWS Nitro System using sixth generation Nitro Cards, M8azn instances target workloads such as real-time financial analytics, high-performance computing, high-frequency trading, CI/CD pipelines, gaming, and simulation modeling across automotive, aerospace, energy, and telecommunications. The instances feature a 4:1 ratio of memory to vCPU and are available in 9 sizes ranging from 2 to 96 vCPUs with up to 384 GiB of memory, including two bare metal variants. For more information visit the Amazon EC2 M8azn instance page.

Last week’s launches
Here are some of the other announcements from last week:

• Amazon Bedrock adds support for six fully managed open weights models – Amazon Bedrock now supports DeepSeek V3.2, MiniMax M2.1, GLM 4.7, GLM 4.7 Flash, Kimi K2.5, and Qwen3 Coder Next. These models span frontier reasoning and agentic coding workloads. DeepSeek V3.2 and Kimi K2.5 target reasoning and agentic intelligence, GLM 4.7 and MiniMax M2.1 support autonomous coding with large output windows, and Qwen3 Coder Next and GLM 4.7 Flash provide cost-efficient alternatives for production deployment. These models are powered by Project Mantle and provide out-of-the-box compatibility with OpenAI API specifications. With the launch, you can also use new open weight models–DeepSeek v3.2 , MiniMax 2.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next in Kiro, a spec-driven AI development tool.
• Amazon Bedrock expands support for AWS PrivateLink – Amazon Bedrock now supports AWS PrivateLink for the bedrock-mantle endpoint, in addition to existing support for the bedrock-runtime endpoint. The bedrock-mantle endpoint is powered by Project Mantle, a distributed inference engine for large-scale machine learning model serving on Amazon Bedrock. Project Mantle provides serverless inference with quality of service controls, higher default customer quotas with automated capacity management, and out-of-the-box compatibility with OpenAI API specifications. AWS PrivateLink support for OpenAI API-compatible endpoints is available in 14 AWS Regions. To get started, visit the Amazon Bedrock console or the OpenAI API compatibility documentation.
• Amazon EKS Auto Mode announces enhanced logging for managed Kubernetes capabilities – You can now configure log delivery sources using Amazon CloudWatch Vended Logs in Amazon EKS Auto Mode. This helps you collect logs from Auto Mode’s managed Kubernetes capabilities for compute autoscaling, block storage, load balancing, and pod networking. Each Auto Mode capability can be configured as a CloudWatch Vended Logs delivery source with built-in AWS authentication and authorization at a reduced price compared to standard CloudWatch Logs. You can deliver logs to CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Amazon Data Firehose destinations. This feature is available in all Regions where EKS Auto Mode is available.
• Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now supports Collection Groups – You can use new Collection Groups to share OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUs) across collections with different AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys. Collection Groups reduce overall OCU costs through a shared compute model while maintaining collection-level security and access controls. They also introduce the ability to specify minimum OCU allocations alongside maximum OCU limits, providing guaranteed baseline capacity at startup for latency-sensitive applications. Collection Groups are available in all Regions where Amazon OpenSearch Serverless is currently available.
• Amazon RDS now supports backup configuration when restoring snapshots – You can view and modify the backup retention period and preferred backup window before and during snapshot restore operations. Previously, restored database instances and clusters inherited backup parameter values from snapshot metadata and could only be modified after restore was complete. You can now view backup settings as part of automated backups and snapshots, and specify or modify these values when restoring, eliminating the need for post-restoration modifications. This is available for all Amazon RDS database engines (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Db2) and Amazon Aurora (MySQL-Compatible and PostgreSQL-Compatible editions) in all AWS commercial Regions and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions at no additional cost.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Summits – Join AWS Summits in 2026, free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), and Bengaluru (April 23–24).

AWS AI and Data Conference 2026 – A free, single-day in-person event on March 12 at the Lyrath Convention Centre in Ireland. The conference covers designing, training, and deploying agents with Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, and QuickSight, integrating them with AWS data services, and applying governance practices to operate them at scale. The agenda includes strategic guidance and hands-on labs for architects, developers, and business leaders.

AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include Ahmedabad (February 28), Slovakia (March 11), and Pune (March 21).

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Esra

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!