Dive Brief:

• Amazon is once again challenging cloud competitors Microsoft and Google with reported plans to expand its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, according to a report from The Information. The upgrades are expected to be announced at its annual customer conference AWS re:Invent later this month. The company will work with startups while also engineering its own AI products.
• The AI program called "Ironman" uses the AWS "data warehouse" service to collect and arrange data more quickly. Data warehouses were launched five years ago by AWS, but the Ironman upgrade will aid data management "for use in machine learning computing jobs," according to the report.
• Ironman will focus on companies in insurance, energy, fraud detection and drug discovery, but the program will also aid data scientists and engineers in developing applications that use AI tech. 

Dive Insight:

As overall cloud revenue increases, vendors are forced to offer more services to maintain their completive edges.

The cloud market is full, and with no expectations for the emergence of another "megacloud," the existing leaders need to fight for relevance. The next way to do so is AI.

Companies such as Intel and Salesforce are tapping into startups to eventually provide AI technology to cloud providers. This enables chip providers to explore AI innovation while avoiding compute resource expenses. 

With more accommodating AI features naturally implemented in the cloud, companies can better manage data and services. AI can automate remedial tasks while also simplifying the retrieval and analytics of data stored in the cloud. 

Microsoft, Google and Facebook are all establishing Montreal as the hub for AI talent. But the competition for AI domination is also partially powered by collaboration. The same major companies have teamed up with Amazon and IBM to create the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society.