AWS launches innovation hub to supercharge cloud and AI innovation in Asia Pacific

Time of India

7 days ago

Amazon
Web Services (
AWS
), an Amazon.com company, today opened its first 8,000-square-foot AWS Innovation Hub in Asia Pacific (APAC), located at the AWS corporate office in downtown Singapore. This new innovation facility offers an immersive experience for CEOs and business leaders in APAC to interact with AWS and Amazon-wide technologies, and over 30 partner solutions across 50 real-world customer use cases for cloud technology. The experience culminates in AWS customers receiving a practical roadmap for accelerating their digital transformation, designed by Vision Builder, a proprietary AWS road-mapping solution powered by Amazon Nova.
* Multi-million-dollar facility brings together cutting-edge technologies from AWS, Amazon, and partners around the world
* AWS will host over 1,000 C-Suite leaders from across the region and 200 students from local tertiary education institutions at the Hub each year
The AWS Innovation Hub aims to fast-track digital and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation and innovation for public and private sector organizations across APAC. The multi-million-dollar facility is an additional investment on top of AWS's commitment to invest US$9 billion into cloud infrastructure in Singapore by 2028. Each year, AWS plans to engage over 1,000 C-Suite leaders and business decision makers at the Hub on cloud and Gen AI technology-led innovation, and will provide 200 students from Singapore's tertiary education institutions an exclusive learning experience at the facility. The virtual and physical demos of existing and new technology solutions are co-built with AWS partners and customers to address top business challenges and can already be adopted by companies in the region.
The AWS Innovation Hub builds on AWS's existing innovation offerings around the world such as the AWS Builders Studio in Melbourne where customers connect with AWS technologists to build, experiment, validate, and test prototypes before scaling. AWS also supports customers to accelerate their generative AI innovation through global initiatives, such as the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, where AWS's expert AI scientists and strategists bring deep industry and AI expertise to guide customers across the full AI lifecycle from ideation to enterprise-wide scale. Additionally, AWS brings startups, developers, investors, and industry experts together at the AWS Gen AI Lofts that are pop-up collaborative spaces and immersive experiences aiming to foster innovation. The AWS Gen AI Lofts visited Bengaluru and Seoul in 2024 and will be coming to Bengaluru and Osaka in 2025.
"Technological innovation is critical to the growth of Asia, and we need innovation to transform customer experiences while also delivering real business value," said Jaime Valles, Vice President, AWS Asia Pacific & Japan. "The AWS Innovation Hub empowers our customers to convert big ideas into real business outcomes by combining our comprehensive cloud and AI technology, proven expertise from our network of over 140,000 partners worldwide, and Amazon's unique culture of innovation. Here at the Hub, our customers can build practical roadmaps to solve the region's most pressing challenges and opportunities in collaboration with AWS. From smart farming and personalized retail to emergency response and digitalized citizen services - the opportunities are endless, and we are excited to help accelerate the pace of digital innovation for the region."
Experiencing cutting-edge technology that accelerates innovation
At the Hub, a first-of-its-kind globally, AWS will curate bespoke innovation experiences for C-Suite leaders depending on their business needs and challenges. Guests will walk through three zones - Aspiration, Acceleration, and Action, ending with a clear digital transformation roadmap to be executed in collaboration with AWS and its partners. In the Aspiration Zone, executives can experience how the latest technologies such as generative AI, quantum computing, and virtual reality can transform APAC businesses and communities.
In the Acceleration Zone, executives learn from Amazon's unique culture of innovation with examples of how Amazon has created long-term impact with technology solutions underpinned by a customer obsessed mindset and a strong purpose driven culture. The zone showcases AWS technical innovations, such as the cost optimized and efficient AWS Graviton, Inferentia and
Trainium
chips, and AWS Outposts, a fully managed solution that extend AWS infrastructure to on-premises or edge locations.
Executives end their experience in the Action Zone in the Working Backwards Studio. Here, the customer discussion is summarized into a vision board by Vision Builder, a proprietary AWS road-mapping solution. Vision Builder can help customers visualize their
Think Big
ideas and develop concrete transformation roadmaps with AWS. Vision Builder is powered by Amazon Nova, a new generation of generative AI foundation models that deliver frontier intelligence and industry leading price performance, designed to be easily accessible and customizable, and available on Amazon Bedrock.
Limitless possibilities with advanced technologies
The innovations featured in the Hub will continue to rotate and evolve in step with the rapid pace of technology evolution. This is particularly to address the most top-of-mind challenges and opportunities that businesses face in APAC. The Hub showcase includes:
* An AI-powered farm-to-table system developed by urban agritech innovator Netatech. This groundbreaking solution integrates intelligent phenotyping, autonomous farm operations, and hyperspectral quality grading to deliver "AI-Verified Fresh" produce with precision, speed, and transparency. Built in Singapore, it is designed to be modular, scalable, and fully automated--paving the way for a global, zero-waste, freshness-first supply chain.
* A mini bike manufacturing line with AWS's E-bike Smart Factory in action, demonstrating how manufacturers can overcome common operational challenges like inventory shortages, production bottlenecks, and quality control issues. The demo shows digital twin technology, generative AI-powered shop floor assistants, and Internet of Things applications developed by AWS and AWS Partners in action.
* ST Engineering's AGIL Trust, an AI-powered suite designed to combat misinformation, is now available on AWS to enable rapid fact-checking, deepfake detection, and large-scale analysis of harmful narratives online. As an AWS Advanced Services Partner since 2019, ST Engineering brings extensive expertise in planning, migrating, deploying and optimising workloads on AWS, while customising applications to meet unique operational needs.
* GS DAP® is an award winning blockchain-based platform by Goldman Sachs that reimagines the transfer of information and value in financial services. The platform provides end-to-end financial instrument issuance and lifecycle capabilities, helping to facilitate client-led transactions and optimizing capital markets workflows.
* A Project Kuiper model rocket, Amazon's initiative to provide fast, affordable broadband to communities around the world that are currently unserved or underserved by traditional internet and communications options. To achieve this goal, Amazon will deploy thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) linked to a global network of antennas, fiber, and internet connection points on the ground.
* Amazon Rufus , a generative AI-powered expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon's extensive product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and information from across the web to answer customer questions on a variety of shopping needs and products, provide comparisons, and make recommendations based on conversational context. Other than the United States, Amazon Rufus is currently available in India and Japan in APAC, with plans for roll out extensively around the world.
* An Amazon Robotics robot drive called Hercules helps employees by traveling around Amazon fulfillment centers to retrieve shelves of products and delivering them to employees, who then pick the items customers ordered for shipping. Amazon has developed, produced, and deployed more than 750,000 robots across its operations network. The goal of robotics technology within Amazon's operations is simple: pair employees with the right technology to make their workday safer, easier, and more productive, while delivering packages to customers faster than ever.
Deloitte, a long-standing AWS Partner, is also showcasing technology solutions at the AWS Innovation Hub. "We are excited for leaders across APAC to experience the AWS Innovation Hub and Deloitte's suite of generative AI solutions tailored to the needs of legal and regulatory agencies, to empower them with greater productivity," said
Lee Chew Chiat
, Deloitte Singapore Technology & Transformation Leader. "AWS and Deloitte have been working together for over seven years to help organizations turn ideas into solutions that drive real-world impact across various industries - from health care and life sciences to financial services, manufacturing and the public sector. We look forward to continuing to support leaders in achieving their strategic visions based on a clear understanding of what the latest innovations can offer and how they can deliver meaningful impact and create lasting value."
The AWS Innovation Hub is inspired by and aims to inspire customers with Amazon's Leadership Principles - Learn and Be Curious, Invent and Simplify, Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility, and most importantly, Think Big.