Top announcements of the What’s Next with AWS, 2026 | Amazon Web Services

The 2026 “What’s Next with AWS” event focused on how AI agents are reshaping business operations. Major announcements included Amazon Quick, an AI work assistant; four specialized Amazon Connect solutions; and an expanded AWS–OpenAI partnership bringing OpenAI models and Codex to Amazon Bedrock. Together, these offerings emphasize integrated agents that can connect to existing systems, make decisions, and execute tasks within enterprise-controlled infrastructure.

Amazon Quick Becomes a Broader AI Work Assistant

• Amazon Quick connects to workplace information, learns user preferences, and takes action on users’ behalf.
• A new desktop app, currently in preview, can access local files, calendars, and communications without requiring a browser.
• Free and Plus plans are available without an AWS account. Users can register with a personal email or Google, Apple, GitHub, or Amazon credentials.
• Quick can generate documents, presentations, infographics, and images directly within chat.
• New native integrations include Google Workspace, Zoom, Airtable, Dropbox, and Microsoft Teams.

Amazon Connect Expands into Four Agentic AI Products

AWS is repositioning Amazon Connect as a portfolio of solutions for specific business workflows:

• Amazon Connect Decisions: A supply-chain planning and intelligence platform using AI teammates, Amazon’s operational expertise, and more than 25 specialized tools to support proactive planning.
• Amazon Connect Talent: A hiring solution in preview that provides AI-led interviews, science-backed assessments, and standardized evaluations for large-scale recruiting.
• Amazon Connect Customer: The renamed customer-experience product, supporting voice, chat, and digital channels. New configuration tools aim to let organizations deploy conversational AI in weeks rather than months.
• Amazon Connect Health: Automates patient verification, appointments, patient insights, ambient documentation, and medical coding to improve access to care and reduce administrative workloads.

AWS and OpenAI Expand Their Partnership

The companies announced several limited-preview offerings that bring OpenAI capabilities into AWS environments:

• OpenAI models on Amazon Bedrock: Models including GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.4 will be accessible through existing Bedrock APIs, with AWS security, governance, and cost controls.
• Codex on Amazon Bedrock: Organizations can run OpenAI’s coding agent using AWS credentials and infrastructure, with usage counting toward AWS cloud commitments. Initial access includes the Codex CLI, desktop app, and Visual Studio Code extension.
• Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI: This service combines OpenAI models with AWS-managed infrastructure and the OpenAI harness for building production-ready agents capable of reasoning through long-running tasks.

AWS’s announcements point toward a future in which AI agents are embedded directly into workplace tools, operational systems, customer-service platforms, and cloud development environments. Organizations looking to adopt these capabilities should evaluate the available previews, integrations, governance controls, and workflow fit before moving to production.