AWS is spending $50 billion building AI infrastructure for the U.S. government

Amazon Web Services is making significant new investments in infrastructure designed to power U.S. government agencies’ AI capabilities.

AWS announced Monday that it will invest $50 billion to build AI “high-performance computing infrastructure” purpose-built for the U.S. government. This increase is intended to expand access to AWS AI services by federal agencies.

The project will add 1.3 gigawatts of computing power and expand government access to AWS products including Amazon SageMaker AI, model customization, Amazon Bedrock, model deployment, Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, and more, according to the company.

AWS plans to break ground on these data center projects in 2026.

“Our investments in government-purposed AI and cloud infrastructure will fundamentally change how federal agencies leverage supercomputing,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said in the company’s press release. “We are giving government agencies greater access to advanced AI capabilities that can accelerate critical missions from cybersecurity to drug discovery. This investment removes technology barriers that have been holding back governments and positions the United States to further lead in the AI ​​era.”

AWS is used to working with the US government.

The company began building cloud infrastructure for the U.S. government in 2011. Three years later, we launched AWS Top Secret-East, the first air-gapped commercial cloud to handle sensitive workloads. AWS introduced AWS Secret Regions in 2017, with certified access to all levels of security classification.

Big tech companies have increasingly pitched their AI services to the U.S. government over the past year.

OpenAI launched a version of ChatGPT in January designed specifically for U.S. federal government agencies. In August, OpenAI announced a deal to give government agencies access to ChatGPT’s enterprise tier for just $1 a year.

That same month, Anthropic announced it would provide the U.S. government with access to the enterprise tier of its Claude chatbot for $1. Shortly after, Google announced Google for Government, which costs 47 cents for the first year.