'One of the things that Amazon is particularly bad at is ...', says Matt Garman, CEO of one of Amazon's biggest businesses

Amazon recently held its annual event AWS re:Invent. The conference is an annual gathering for the cloud community, featuring keynotes, technical sessions, and innovation talks. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon's on-demand cloud platform. CEO Matt Garman spoke with Acquired podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal at the event. Garman spoke about a range of subjects, this includes Generative AI, how AWS thinks about its product strategy, changing workforce in the times of AI and more.

As reported by GeekWire, Garman was blunt about what Amazon seemngly doesn’t do well. He was replying to a question on what he thinks Amazon is not-so-good at. Garman said Amazon is “particularly bad” at copying competitors. “One of the things that Amazon is particularly bad at is being a fast follower,” he said. “When we try to copy someone, we’re just bad at it.” AWS CEO went on to add that the the better formula, he said, is to think from first principles about solving a customer problem, only when it believes it has differentiated expertise, not simply to copy existing products.

The hosts also asked Matt Garman to quantify how much of AWS is now AI-related. To this, Garman said that it is getting harder to say, as AI becomes embedded in everything.

AWS beats expectations in third quarter of 2025

In the third quarter of 2025, Amazon said that revenue in its cloud computing business increased 20%, exceeding analysts’ estimates. The company said that revenue at Amazon Web Services for the third quarter totaled $33 billion. Operating income rose 9% from a year ago to $11.4 billion, also beating estimates and accounting for about two-thirds of Amazon’s total operating profit. Amazon's cloud revenue rose at the fastest clip in nearly three years, helping the company forecast quarterly sales above estimates. The vast majority of Amazon’s revenues are generated through the sales of electronics and other products, followed by third-party seller services and AWS.



“AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022," CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement. "We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and we’ve been focused on accelerating capacity."

Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said he expected full-year capital expenditures to be around $125 billion, and higher next year, without providing details. The company booked $89.9 billion in capital expenditures through the first three quarters, largely on AI projects.

Amazon names new AI chief

Amazon recently announced reorganization of teams working on artificial intelligence projects, putting a top leader from the company’s cloud division in charge of a new unit. Peter DeSantis will lead the new group, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a message to employees.