AWS Lets Enterprises Build Custom Frontier AI with Nova Forge

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.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/02/aws-launches-new-nova-ai-models-and-a-service-that-gives-customers-more-control/