The AWS Summit São Paulo 2024, held on August 15th at the Transamerica Expo Center, brought together 13,000 cloud enthusiasts and industry leaders to explore the latest innovations in cloud computing.
A major highlight was the keynote address by Vasi Philomin, VP of Generative AI at AWS, and Cleber Morais, General Manager of AWS Brazil, which focused on the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI).
The solutions and services, such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, and Amazon SageMaker, were also demonstrated at the exhibition, where industry analysts had the opportunity to tour and see live demos from product experts.
Amazon Bedrock, recently launched in Brazil officially (see F&S blog post) offers the broadest selection of AI Large Language Models (LLMs) in the industry, including multiple models from AI21labs, Amazon, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, and stability.ai. This contrasts with other big techs that are pushing their LLMs.
In addition, Philomin showed the proprietary AI hardware that Amazon developed: Inferentia, an accelerator with price-performance for AI inference applications using Amazon EC2, and Trainium, a machine learning (ML) chip for training of +100 billion parameter models. These add alternatives to enterprises globally to train LLMs, as NVDIA AI hardware demand escalated, leading to challenges in terms of supply and pricing.
Key Takeaways from the Keynote
Philomin and Morais highlighted how AI and GenAI are revolutionizing businesses across various sectors. They emphasized the potential of these technologies to streamline operations, improve customer experiences, and drive innovation. The keynote also underscored AWS’s commitment to providing a comprehensive suite of AI and GenAI tools and services, enabling customers to leverage these technologies effectively.
Frost & Sullivan’s annual end-user survey with IT decision-makers revealed that the AI maturity of companies in Latin America is lower than in other regions, with 79% of companies still in the exploratory level. As a result, most companies plan to either procure GenAI from technology vendors with in-house customization or outsource the implementation end-to-end, instead of doing it fully in-house.
Some of the key challenges that Frost & Sullivan identified for enterprises in the region are: developing a cohesive Generative AI strategy and roadmap, assessing return on investment, lack of human talent and skills, difficulty gaining the commitment of senior leadership, and concerns around data privacy, security and governance. Technology vendors and consulting partners have the opportunity to help enterprises mitigate these challenges and help companies maximize Return on Investment while being compliant with regulations, cyber security, and best practices.
Customer Success Stories
The summit also showcased inspiring customer case studies at the main stage, including:
- Serasa Experian: A leading credit bureau in Brazil, Serasa Experian, demonstrated how it used Amazon Bedrock with LLMs from Serasa Experian to build a GenAI chatbot that uses real-time financial history of the customer, financial education articles, and recordings from the call center for a hyper-personalized interaction. It is in the final testing phase and soon will be available to 92 million Brazilians registered in the company`s mobile app.
- Localiza&Co: A prominent car rental company, Localiza&Co, with a fleet of 630,000 vehicles, 450,000 vehicles connected with the Internet of Things (IoT), shared how it’s leveraging AWS’s AI and GenAI services to optimize fleet management, reduce fraud and accidents, and to automate the identification and quantification of damages to vehicles.
Industry analysts had the opportunity to have a Q&A session with Cleber Morais and the two customers, deep-diving into these interesting use cases of GenAI by relevant enterprises in Brazil, in addition to talking to partners involved in the implementation of LLMs for enterprises in Brazil and Latin America.
The Future of AI and GenAI with AWS
AWS will invest R$10.1 billion (US$1.8 billion) by 2034 to expand, build, connect, operate, and maintain data centers in Brazil. This investment will help AWS to meet growing customer demand for cloud and GenAI services. This amount is in addition to the investment of R$19.2 billion (US$3.8 billion) made from 2011 to 2023.
The AWS Summit São Paulo 2024 provided a glimpse into the exciting future of AI and GenAI, especially within the Brazilian market. The event emphasized the importance of these technologies in driving digital transformation and fostering innovation. With its robust suite of AI and GenAI services, AWS is poised to play a pivotal role in enabling businesses to harness the full potential of these technologies and stay ahead of the curve.
Conclusion
The AWS Summit São Paulo 2024 was a resounding success, serving as a platform for learning, collaboration, and inspiration. The keynote addressed customer success stories and overall focus on AI and GenAI highlighted the transformative power of these technologies and the significant role AWS is playing in their adoption. As businesses increasingly embrace AI and GenAI to fuel their growth, events like the AWS Summit São Paulo will continue to play a vital role in driving innovation and shaping the future of the cloud computing landscape.
