Amazon Web Services (AWS) is opening its doors to companies that want to use them as a springboard for new digital and AI-based transformation and innovation projects. That's the underlying mandate of the newly opened AWS Innovation Hub in Singapore, a first-in-the-region and possibly first-in-the-world facility set up to drive AI innovation across the economy.

The hub - a combination showcase, incubator, development space, and learning facility - is a response to intense demand from customers who want to launch innovation and transformation projects but need just that little push or that platform on which to start, said Jaime Vallés, general manager for Asia Pacific and Japan at AWS.

"We thought it could be way bigger than our builder studio in Australia," he said, referring to the collaborative space AWS opened in Melbourne in 2024. "The team felt this was a great opportunity to do something different around innovation. And the outcome is a hub that will continuously evolve."

The multi-million dollar Innovation Hub is part of a series of massive investments in AI that AWS is making around the region. Earlier in June, AWS announced an AU$20 billion investment in its data centre infrastructure across Australia and another US$5.13 billion AI data centre in Korea. These are on top of on a 2.26 trillion yen investment in cloud infrastructure in Japan, announced in January this year.

Why the big, bold moves?

It's not just about the technology, Vallés said, speaking to media before the hub's official opening last week. While he sees a high level of demand for innovation and transformation support in multiple industries, specifically innovation and transformation driven by generative and agentic AI, he believes that for the demand to convert into actual change, a platform must exist to bring together technology, culture, skills and stakeholders from public and private sectors.

"In AWS, we have, in our view, the best portfolio in terms of technology, but the culture and the people is what allows that to happen. We have invested billions of dollars in APJ, and we're also investing in millions of people's skills in order to drive that transformation. The Innovation Hub is the first in the world, and is just another step in our journey to transform and to build a better future."

As he put it, AWS's investments are about creating a culture of continuous experimentation wherever AWS operates, and about training millions of people across the region in skills that can pair with the technology.

"It's about customer transformation. It's about business transformation. It's about leveraging that technology to drive better customer experience," he said. "A lot of focus has been put on cost improvement. I would rather say, for me, the most important thing is customer experience transformation."

The hub, he explained, is not just an AWS space; its objective is to connect the community - private sector partners and public sector stakeholders - and to show them opportunities and best practices, but also, and very importantly, to ensure that people who come to the hub leave with a clear roadmap of what they themselves want to do in their own organisations.

"In Amazon culture, you let the people observe and experiment. The idea is to get our customers to a space where they can really get into the mind frame of re imagining what they can do with us. If they customers come, they see the technology, they see the culture, they learn what we can do with people, and they leave, we've completely missed the mark. What we want is for the customers to come and see the opportunity, see the best practices, but then at the end, they go to executive positioning. They bring their ideas, and they need to leave with a very clear plan to make something happen. And then we work together with them to bring that to reality."

Photo: Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Low Yen Ling (3rd from right), Jaime Vallés, Vice President, AWS Asia Pacific & Japan (3rd from left), DISG and AWS execs launch the AWS Innovation Hub and AI Springboard .