Three key takeaways from the AWS Summit Singapore

AWS Kiro takes center stage as AI continues to entice everyone with innovative and promising capabilities showcased at the AWS Summit Singapore.

With nearly 10,000 in-person and online attendees, the AWS Summit Singapore proved that innovation is not slowing down at all in the region, with continued interest and demand. The one-day event featured several customer success stories, executive networking sessions, channel partners and customer meetings as well as showcasing the latest tools from AWS and its technology partners.

“Why not” was the key message shared during the keynote session by Jaime Vallés, Vice President & Managing Director APJC, AWS as he highlighted how AI is driving the change for businesses and the public sector in the region.

Vallés highlighted that every great invention started with a single word – Why? And right after that, the more powerful question is - Why not? He explained that ideas should not be held back, and technology today has the capabilities to make most of these ideas a reality.

“We don't want anything to hold them back. We just want them to say, why not? Let's just build it. We want to remove every barrier between your imagination and reality. Why? Because we belive builders, should have the freedom to invent anything,” he said in his keynote address at the AWS Summit Singapore.

Indeed, the summit featured a variety of AI use cases by partners and customers, with the attendees curious to see how they can implement some of these in their organizations or even develop more of their own use cases.

Here are three key takeaways from the AWS Summit Singapore.

Kiro takes center stage

With AI agents today having the capabilities to turn tasks that took years into ones that can be done in days or even weeks, Vallés shared that AI agents are completely reimagining the way software is built.

“AI-powered software development tools have evolved rapidly over the past year. But as these tools became more powerful, we actually noticed a gap. They were generating code for builders to not guide the process or ensure it aligned with their team's standards. So, we took what is exciting about AI-powered software development and added the structure that developers really need. Kiro gives developers a structure with complete transparency. When you ask Kiro to build something, it thinks through the problem first. It gives you full stories with acceptance criteria, technical design docs, architecture diagrams, sequence growth,” he said.

AWS Kiro is an AI-native, agentic IDE developed by AWS, designed for spec-driven development to move from concept to production. Built on Code-OSS (VS Code), it focuses on structuring AI coding by generating technical specifications, requirements, and task lists, allowing AI agents to handle complex tasks, documentation, and testing things that developer teams would normally spend hours documenting.

Certis and Grab entice attendees

At the keynote session, AWS customers also shared their AI journey, specifically in how they are embedding AI into their business to drive more value and outcomes.

Ng Tian Beng, President and Group CEO at Certis, showed how AI is being deployed in frontline and physical security operations. This includes embedding AI into its security services through Max, an autonomous robotic concierge, and Ace an autonomous robotic dog for security patrols.

“Both are connected to the same platform and cloud infrastructure. And that's the real story here. It's not just about any single robot, but it's really about the system behind it. And this is why building with AWS matters. AWS has given us more than just infrastructure. They have given us the foundation to build, to test, to train, to deploy and to continuously improve, and the ability to scale a new generation of AI-powered operational technologies,” Ng said.

For Ng, Certis believes that ops should be powered by tech and not tech for its own sake, but tech that can make real operations safer, smarter and better.

“The question is no longer if AI will transform operations. That's actually a given. But the real question is how quickly we can bring together these technologies out of the lab and into the real world so that we can really make a difference,” he added.

Meanwhile, Ken Lek, Managing Director, Head of Strategic Finance & Investor Relations, Grab shared how the company is using AI to manage its financial planning better. This includes getting the best outcomes from 300 terabytes of data that Grab is processing a day on AWS.

The Grabhouse data lake uses Amazon S3, EKS and EMR to improve the data quality, enabling better outcomes for the company, with manual data reconciliation dropping up to 60%, and seeing Grab reach more profitable results in full year of net profit in 2025.

Kiro for the future workforce

At the summit, Elsie Tan, Country Manager, Worldwide Public Sector Singapore, announced that AWS will be giving every eligible learner at Singapore’s Institutes of Higher Learning 1,000 complimentary Kiro credits, enabling them to build a production-ready application with built-in documentation and automated tests.

“The Singapore budget this year set a very visionary pace with lofty ambitions. AI adoption is Singapore is definitely a focus. Access to AI is also widespread. But more importantly, we want to build capability. Now, capability can come in many shapes and forms. The focus we have is to build people with the skills that can build with AI responsibly, rigorously and at scale. Because the question is not whether a graduate coming out from the IHL can use AI. It's whether they can walk into an organization, build a production system with AI, take ownership of the AI, maintain it, iterate on it and be accountable for its outcomes,” she said.

“We're talking about how AI should be able to enable students to be able to be employable with the right skills that can ensure that professional focus. And that's the gap that AWS is here to close. And it starts with the next generation of learners, our students in the IHLs,” she added.

This pilot is open to student and adult learners aged 18 and above across all polytechnics, ITE colleges, and universities, with Republic Polytechnic (RP) being the first IHL in Singapore to embed Kiro into its curriculum through a three-year MoU signed with AWS in 2025.

AWS is also launching AWSome Lab in July 2026. The web-based portal connects Singapore SMEs and enterprises with student-developed AI solutions, embedding real industry problems into academic curricula. Together with the Kiro credits initiative, AWSome Lab creates a structured path from classroom learning to workforce-ready outcomes.