Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) partners with Anthropic to launch an AI intelligent agent market next week.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) Cloud Services (AWS) will launch an AI Agent Marketplace next week, and AI company Anthropic has confirmed to be its partner. Two insiders revealed that the product will be officially unveiled at the AWS Summit in New York on July 15th. AI agents are now everywhere, and all Silicon Valley investors are optimistic about startups developing such products - although there is still disagreement on the precise definition of "AI agent." This somewhat vague term typically refers to computer programs that can make autonomous decisions and perform tasks (such as interacting with software), powered by AI models in the background. OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI giants are promoting this as the next generation revolutionary technology. However, the distribution of AI agents faces challenges with most companies currently operating independently. AWS's move seems to aim at resolving this deadlock. According to sources, the AWS exclusive agent marketplace will allow startups to directly provide AI agent services to AWS customers. Enterprise users can browse, install, and access various AI agents through this unified platform. This may bring significant growth momentum to Anthropic and other partners. Anthropic, which has received funding from Amazon.com, Inc. (reportedly accepting a new round of billions of dollars investment from the e-commerce giant), will focus on the development of AI agents in the coming years. The company not only develops AI agents autonomously but also empowers developers to create customized solutions through APIs. The AWS marketplace will help them reach a broader customer base (including existing users of competitors like OpenAI) and attract more developers to use their API development ecosystem, ultimately increasing revenue scale - with annual revenue exceeding $3 billion by the end of May. Similar to all online marketplaces, AWS will take a cut from agent installation revenue. However, compared to the potential value of opening new revenue channels and customer acquisition capabilities, the commission percentage is minimal. Insiders revealed that the marketplace uses a SaaS-like independent pricing model rather than bundled service sales. Amazon.com, Inc. is not the first tech giant to enter the AI agent marketplace. In April of this year, Alphabet Inc. Class C Cloud launched an AI Agent Marketplace; a month later, Microsoft Corporation launched the "Agent Store" in Microsoft 365 Copilot; enterprise software service providers such as Salesforce and ServiceNow have also launched their own platforms. However, the effectiveness of such marketplaces for small AI startups and specific demand customers is still to be proven.