You might think Amazon’s biggest swing in the AI race was its $8 billion investment in Anthropic. But AWS has also been building in-house foundation models, new chips, massive data centers, and agents meant to keep enterprise customers locked inside its ecosystem. The company believes these offerings will give it an edge as businesses of all shapes and sizes deploy AI in the real world.

WIRED sat down with AWS CEO Matt Garman ahead of the company’s annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas to discuss his AI vision, and how he plans to extend Amazon’s lead in the cloud market over its fast-rising competitors, Microsoft and Google.

Garman is betting that AI is a service that AWS can deliver more cheaply and reliably than its rivals. Through Bedrock, Amazon’s platform for building AI apps, he says customers can access a variety of AI foundation models while keeping the familiar data controls, security layers, and reliability that AWS is known for. If that pitch holds up, it could help AWS dominate in the AI era.

“Two years ago, people were building AI applications. Now, people are building applications that have AI in them,” said Garman, arguing that AI is becoming a feature inside large products rather than a standalone experiment. “That’s the platform that we’ve built, and that’s where I think you see AWS really start to take the lead.”

Many of the announcements at this year’s re:Invent fall along these lines. Amazon unveiled new, cost-efficient AI models in its Nova series; agents that can work autonomously on software development and cybersecurity tasks; as well as a fresh offering, Forge, that lets enterprises cheaply train AI models on their own data.

The stakes are high for AWS to get this right. While Amazon’s cloud unit dominated the smartphone era, smaller rivals like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure have grown at higher rates since the arrival of ChatGPT. Microsoft and Google have surged by tightly integrating with frontier AI models—the technology underlying ChatGPT and Gemini, respectively—attracting enterprises eager to experiment with cutting-edge capabilities.

This rise of AWS’s rivals has raised questions about Amazon’s broader AI strategy, and how the incumbent will fare in the years to come.

Garman says he’s been hearing these concerns for years, but less so in recent months. He argues that the tide is turning, pointing to AWS’s stronger-than-expected results in the company’s third quarter as evidence that his strategy is working.

Take it from me: Spending an hour with Melinda French Gates will restore at least an iota of your faith in humanity. The billionaire philanthropist, investor, and longtime advocate for women’s and girls’ rights is the rare example of an über-wealthy American who takes seriously the responsibility that their wealth confers.

In Gates’ case, she’s now channeling much of that responsibility—and billions of her own dollars—into Pivotal Ventures, a collective of organizations focused on advancing women’s interests in the US and around the world. Most recently, Pivotal announced $250 million in awards to women’s health organizations in 22 countries. Given the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on women’s interests, and diversity writ large, as well as the dystopian cuddle puddle taking place between tech industry leaders (Gates’ ex-husband, Bill, has been a part of that shift) and President Trump, it felt like a particularly salient moment to check in with Gates about, well, all of it.

From her own path through the masculine “debate club” of Big Tech to the billionaire boys who aren’t giving away the big bucks, I found myself pleasantly surprised, and even a little bit inspired, by Gates’ candor in discussing the very real challenges of this particular moment. So if you checked the news and felt even slightly infuriated this morning, keep reading. It helps to be reminded that not all billionaires are created equal—and that some of them are still pushing for more equality overall.

The use of “trusted” digital ID software to verify your identity online in the UK has taken on a statutory footing as of 1 December.

The measures contained in the Data (Use and Access) Act, which became law in June this year, have now taken effect, introducing a formal and legally backed set of standards and governance rules with which all certified providers of digital verification services (DVS) must conform.

The move is intended to provide the public with confidence when using certified digital identity apps, through a framework that shows suppliers are considered trustworthy.

The statutory regime is also likely to underpin the UK government’s plans for a national digital ID scheme, which was announced by prime minister Keir Starmer in September, and is due to go through a consultation phase early next year.

The statutory system formalises processes that have been in place on a trial basis for some time. Suppliers of DVS tools have to conform to the government’s Digital Identities and Attributes Framework (DIATF) and associated codes that add further specifications for use cases such as right to work or right to rent checks.

Once certified, suppliers are listed on a statutory register and will be able to use a trust mark to prove their conformance for potential users. So far, 48 DVS providers who have gained DIATF certification have applied to join the register.

“This regime of standards, governance and oversight helps to ensure the public can trust digital verification services offered under it in the UK,” said John Peart, CEO of the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), which oversees the framework.