Amazon Web Services is investing up to $50 billion to build a dedicated AI and supercomputing cloud for the U.S. government, a move designed to give federal agencies a massive boost in AI capabilities.
What $50 billion buys: The investment will deliver 1.3 gigawatts of new computing power and give agencies access to a suite of tools including Amazon's SageMaker and Anthropic's Claude. Construction on the new data centers is slated to begin in 2026.
An AI price war: The move intensifies the fierce competition for federal contracts, where rivals have made aggressive plays. OpenAI offered agencies access to its enterprise tools for just $1 a year, with Anthropic and Google making similarly low-cost deals to get a foothold in Washington.
The investment builds on AWS's long history of federal work, cementing its role as a foundational technology partner for the U.S. government's national AI ambitions. $50 billion is only part of a much larger spending spree, with Amazon boosting its total 2025 capital expenditure forecast to $125 billion amid a wider infrastructure race that includes the rival Stargate initiative.
