Folks stroll previous the emblem of Amazon Net Companies (AWS) at its exhibitor stall on the India Cellular Congress 2025 at Yashobhoomi, a conference and expo heart in New Delhi, India, October 8, 2025.
Anushree Fadnavis | Reuters
Amazon‘s “sovereign cloud” providing in Europe is a “massive guess” for the corporate, AWS CEO Matt Garman advised CNBC because it launched on Thursday, in a transfer designed to maintain it among the many main gamers within the area amid stringent laws there for tech large.
The time period sovereign cloud broadly pertains to cloud computing providers the place the info is saved, dealt with and never moved out of a selected jurisdiction.
“We predict it is an enormous potential right here. We’re making a massive guess,” AWS CEO Matt Garman advised CNBC in an unique interview.
The European Union (EU) has pushed for corporations working within the bloc to be compliant with its numerous information and privateness laws, as issues have risen concerning the dominance of U.S. tech giants within the cloud house and potential entry to European residents’ information.
The Amazon Net Companies (AWS) European Sovereign Cloud, primarily based in Brandenburg, Germany, and first introduced in 2023, is a brand new idea. Amazon mentioned in a press launch on Thursday that the cloud is “bodily and logically separate” from different AWS areas. To do that, Amazon has created a brand new father or mother firm for the sovereign cloud that will likely be domestically managed within the European Union (EU) and run by EU residents.
Garman mentioned that clients needed extra controls round sovereignty earlier than they moved information saved on-premise into the cloud. “And now we’re giving them a cloud that does not drive them to make these commerce offs. And we predict that that unlocks an enormous quantity of enterprise,” he mentioned.
The European Sovereign Cloud consists of customer-controlled encryption, as an example, the place clients can management the keys to their encryption and in order that “that if anybody was even capable of get entry to [their data], they would not be capable of learn it,” Garman mentioned.
“We predict that these numerous ranges of safety, each know-how protections in addition to coverage protections, actually layer that on and supply a very distinctive providing that is simply completely different than something on the market at this time,” he added.
Stéphane Israël will lead the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Stefan Hoechbauer, who’s vice chairman of AWS international gross sales for Germany and Europe Central, has been appointed as a managing director. AWS additionally introduced 5 new members of an advisory board for the sovereign cloud, three of that are Amazon workers.
AWS mentioned the sovereign cloud has “no essential dependencies on non-EU infrastructure” and it will probably proceed to function within the occasion of a communications disruption with the remainder of the world. Underneath “excessive circumstances, authorised AWS workers of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, who’re EU residents, may have unbiased entry to a duplicate of the supply code wanted to keep up the AWS European Sovereign Cloud providers,” the corporate mentioned.
For the previous few years, European politicians and regulators have grown involved concerning the dominance of U.S. tech corporations over essential know-how infrastructure.
Regardless of the EU pushing for regional corporations to develop their companies, AWS, Microsoft and Google account for 70% of the cloud computing market within the area, in accordance with Synergy Analysis Group.
At the same time as AWS pushes its sovereign cloud, European regulators are at the moment investigating cloud computing providers from Amazon and Microsoft below the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which goals to curb the facility of Massive Tech.
In 2024, Amazon mentioned it might make investments 7.8 billion euros ($9.1 billion) within the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Germany by way of 2040. On Thursday, Amazon mentioned it might increase the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
Elsewhere, AWS expects AI demand to proceed accelerating. “We proceed to be pleasantly shocked at how a lot demand is on the market, actually,” Garman mentioned.
“I do suppose that all through 2026 we’ll see increasingly more clients actually beginning to get constructive ROI out of their AI investments,” he added, including that through its AI coding agent Kiro clients had been constructing “implausible new experiences into every little thing from monetary providers to healthcare to retail, actually form of reimagining what’s on the market. So it is going from proof of idea to extra implementation throughout the group.”
Garman can also be enthusiastic about robots and “world fashions,” which seek advice from AI fashions that perceive the bodily, actual world and are wanted to make advanced robots work, additionally referred to “bodily AI.” He mentioned that AWS was not at the moment constructing its personal world mannequin, nonetheless.
“Robotics is a gigantic alternative throughout many various industries, and so we’re fairly enthusiastic about it. And when [will] we actually form of hit that capabilities curve? You realize, it is anyone’s guess, however that know-how is progressing actually quickly,” he added.
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