Releases

AWS introduced a managed text-to-speech service with natural-sounding voices.

AWS introduced the conversational AI service built from the speech recognition and language understanding technology behind Alexa.

AWS introduced managed image analysis for object, scene and face detection.

AWS selected MXNet as its preferred deep-learning framework and committed engineering investment to the open-source project.

Amazon open-sourced its Deep Scalable Sparse Tensor Network Engine for recommendation workloads.

Amazon opened Alexa to developers through the Alexa Skills Kit and Alexa Voice Service.

AWS launched its first managed machine-learning service for building predictive models from data in S3, Redshift and RDS.

Amazon agreed to acquire chip-design company Annapurna Labs, strengthening its ability to build custom silicon for AWS.

Amazon introduced the Alexa voice service with the first Echo smart speaker.

Amazon launched AWS with Amazon S3, establishing the cloud platform that later became the foundation for its AI infrastructure and managed AI services.

Amazon launched a marketplace for human intelligence tasks that became widely used for labeling and evaluating machine-learning data.

Amazon completed its initial public offering on Nasdaq under the ticker AMZN.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in Bellevue, Washington; the company later expanded from ecommerce into cloud computing, devices and artificial intelligence.