Amazon Web Services just made a major play in the AI race. At AWS re:Invent, CEO Matt Garman unveiled four upgraded Nova 2 models along with Nova Forge, a new service that lets enterprises build their own custom “Novella” AI models for $100,000 a year. The announcement highlights AWS’s push to give companies more control over AI training — especially when working with proprietary data — while strengthening AWS’s foothold in the enterprise AI market.
KEY POINTS
Four new homegrown AI models launched under the “Nova 2” family:
Nova 2 Lite: A cheaper reasoning model for everyday tasks.
Nova 2 Pro: A high-power reasoning agent for complex work like coding.
Nova 2 Sonic: A speech-to-speech model for conversational AI.
Nova 2 Omni: A multimodal model that processes images, text, video, and speech, and outputs text and images.
Nova Forge, a new service, lets enterprises build custom “Novella” models using AWS’s base models.
Priced at $100,000/year (via CNBC).
Offers access to pre-trained, mid-trained, or post-trained models.
Designed to avoid degradation issues that happen when companies fine-tune models with their own data.
AWS claims tens of thousands of customers now use Nova, including Robinhood, Infosys, Blue Origin, and startups like NinjaTech AI.
Early customers of Nova Forge include Reddit, Sony, and Booking.com.
KEY QUOTES
Matt Garman on Nova’s growth: “Nova has been, has grown to be used by tens of thousands of customers today… and today, we’re making Nova even better.”
On why enterprises need Nova Forge: “The more you customize models… these models tend to forget some of that interesting stuff that it learned earlier — the core reasoning.”
On comparing AI training to human learning: “It’s a little bit like humans trying to learn a new language… when you’re really young, it’s easy… later in life, it’s actually much, much harder. Model training is kind of like this too.”
IMPLICATIONS
AWS is doubling down on homegrown AI — a sign it wants to rely less on third-party model providers.
Companies get more control over model customization, which could be a game-changer for industries with strict data-governance needs.
Nova Forge may attract enterprises that want custom AI without building from scratch — especially for proprietary or sensitive data.
Competition heats up between AWS, Google, and OpenAI/Microsoft for enterprise AI dominance.
With big brands like Sony and Reddit already on board, AWS is signaling that Nova isn’t just an experiment — it’s becoming a serious contender in the enterprise AI ecosystem.
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