June 30, 2026 — Amazon Web Services rolled out a dedicated Forward Deployed Engineering organization backed by $1 billion to embed AWS frontier teams with enterprise customers deploying agentic AI.
Francessca Vasquez, VP of Frontier AI Engineering and Services, told SiliconANGLE that customers sought to condense two- and three-year transformation projects into manageable timelines. FDE teams compress months-long work into days using agentic AI, leaving behind a “system of intelligence” — a network of relationships among software, business knowledge, processes, and structure.
Vasquez described agentic AI as changing the business landscape in ways never seen before, with customers caught in turbulence trying to keep pace.
The model follows Palantir’s pioneered FDE approach, now adopted by OpenAI (1.5B JV), and AWS ($1B internal org). AWS distinguishes its model as internal investment rather than PE-backed joint venture.
Success measured by how quickly customers develop new products and acquire lasting AI engineering skills.