- DeepSeek’s AI models have taken the tech industry by storm in recent days.
- More than 20 big AWS customers have asked Amazon for access to DeepSeek models: internal document.
- AWS’s strategy focuses on offering diverse AI models, unlike competitors that prioritize their own.
Big Amazon cloud customers have been pressing the tech giant to give them access to DeepSeek’s AI models, the latest sign of the Chinese startup taking the tech world by storm.
More than 20 key clients of Amazon Web Services asked the company to make DeepSeek models available through Amazon’s Bedrock AI development tool this weekend, according to an internal document obtained by Business Insider.
Toyota, Stripe, Cisco, Yelp, and Workday were among AWS customers asking for this access, with many wanting to test and evaluate DeepSeek’s AI capabilities internally. Other companies that made similar requests include Mercado Libre and Kellogg, the document showed.
An Amazon spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment on Monday. Spokespeople for Stripe, Cisco, Yelp, Workday, Toyota, Mercado Libre, and Kellogg didn’t respond to requests for comment.
DeepSeek recently rolled out AI models that are on par with, or better than, some of Silicon Valley’s top offerings — at a fraction of the cost. Its cheap pricing, strong performance, and compute-efficiency have raised questions about US tech companies’ massive spending on competing products.
Tech stocks, including Nvidia, Broadcom, and TSMC, plunged on Monday as investors tried to assess the long-term implications of DeepSeek’s initial success.
Amazon shares dropped early on Monday trading, but rallied during the day to end up 0.2%.
The moves highlight Amazon’s strategic advantage in the generative AI race. From early on, AWS focused on providing customers with as many AI models as possible through Bedrock, believing that no one model would dominate the market.
That’s a contrast to other tech companies, such as OpenAI and Google, which have spent heavily on building their own frontier AI models.
AWS still has an internal AGI team developing its own AI models, and the company unveiled the latest version, Nova, in December. However, Amazon has mostly prioritized offering a range of other AI models through the cloud.
Amazon often makes decisions based on customer feedback, and the company is likely considering making DeepSeek’s models available through Bedrock after such a flood of client requests, according to a person familiar with the matter.
One AWS employee told BI that the company is not in “panic” mode over DeepSeek like some other tech companies. If DeepSeek’s models are good, “we’ll just host it on Bedrock,” this person said. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?
Contact the reporter Eugene Kim via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email (ekim@businessinsider.com). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Insider’s source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.
