By Rabia Nazif
AWS to launch AI Agent Marketplace next week with Anthropic as partner.
According to the two people familiar with the matter, the AWS Agent Marketplace is set to launch at the AWS summit in New York City on July 15. AWS and Anthropic refused to comment.
AI agents are everywhere, and Silicon Valley investors are backing startups building them- despite some vagueness over the exact definition. Basically, AI agents are programs that use AI models to independently perform tasks, such as execute API calls, data retrieval, or software navigation.
Open AI and Anthropic are promoting them as a next Big thing, but distribution is disintegrated across some platforms. AWS is aiming to solve this with its new Agent Marketplace.
AWS’s Agent Marketplace will allow startups to sell AI agents directly to AWS customers, while giving enterprises a unified platform to discover, evaluate, and deploy agents based on specific needs, according to a source.
The launch could benefit partners like Anthropic, which already has Amazon’s backing and is reportedly set to receive another multi-billion dollar investment. Anthropic sees AI Agents as a core of AI near- term future, building its own and supporting third-party development through its Claude API.
AWS’s Agent Marketplace could help Anthropic reach new customers, already using rival agents, such as those from Open AI. Its presence may encourage more developers to build with the Claude API, boosting usage and revenue growth. Anthropic reached $3 billion in annualized revenue in late May.
Similar to other digital marketplaces, AWS will take a small revenue share from agent sales, but the larger opportunity lies in giving startups a scalable way to monetize agents and access enterprise customers.
The marketplace model will let startups charge for AI agents, using a SaaS-style pricing model than bundled services, a source said. Amazon isn’t the first to launch such a platform. Google Cloud introduced its AI Agent Marketplace in April, followed by Microsoft’s Agent Store within Microsoft 365 Copilot in May. Enterprise providers like Salesforce and ServiceNow have also launched similar marketplaces.
However, it remains to be seen how effective these platforms are for smaller AI startups and enterprises looking for specific agents.
