AWS to invest $50B in AI and supercomputing infrastructure for government customers

Hwawon Ceci Lee/Anadolu via Getty Images

Alexandra Kelley By Alexandra Kelley,
Staff Correspondent, Nextgov/FCW

By Alexandra Kelley

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Amazon Web Services is granting government expanded access to its tech products offerings while scaling the infrastructure required to support it.

Amazon Web Services announced Monday that it will be aiming to expand its artificial intelligence and supercomputing infrastructure for government customers, unveiling a new investment of up to $50 billion towards scaling capabilities for federal operations.

The investments are intended to add 1.3 gigawatts of electricity generation for its AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret and AWS GovCloud regions. In addition to more power, AWS is preparing to scale new data centers with advanced compute technologies that will support expanded access to AWS software products, namely Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Nova and Anthropic’s Claude, plus hardware like AWS Trainium chips. 

The expanded access and infrastructure are intended to support a diverse group of use cases. 

“Our investment in purpose-built government AI and cloud infrastructure will fundamentally transform how federal agencies leverage supercomputing,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said in a news release. “We’re giving agencies expanded access to advanced AI capabilities that will enable them to accelerate critical missions from cybersecurity to drug discovery.”

Public and private sector leaders have said that modernizing U.S. computing infrastructure is tantamount to securing the country’s leadership in AI. President Donald Trump signed an executive order over the summer focused on expediting permitting for the construction of new data centers that can support an increased volume of AI-driven computation. 

In the private sector, OpenAI, Oracle and foreign investors in Japan and the United Arab Emirates teamed up to supply $100 billion in funding for U.S.-based data centers through the Stargate initiative, announced in January.

The AWS announcement supports the interest the federal government has had in not just establishing tech-advancing policy, but benefiting from new tools. Multiple AI companies have been entering new deals with government partners to support expedited and efficient government operations –– an element Garman says will help further U.S. AI leadership ambitions. 

“This investment removes the technology barriers that have held government back and further positions America to lead in the AI era,” he said. 

AWS said it intends to break ground on the investment in 2026.