Amazon.com’s cloud unit dominates the market for computing power delivered over the Internet, but has been lagging in offering artificial intelligence tools.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has, however, now added AI enhancements, hired experts in the field and signed up customers like software maker Intuit and insurer Liberty Mutual.
Still Amazon is playing catch-up to the AI market which is set to fuel growth in cloud computing, which currently is largely in the hands of Microsoft and Google.
Sales of software for creating AI applications are forecast to rise about 40 percent through 2021 to more than $8 billion, according to research firm IDC.
Google and Microsoft have beaten AWS in rolling out early products and have natural advantages that stem from their large research labs stocked with AI experts.
AWS, however, still has a five-to-one lead in overall cloud market share, according to Gartner.
