AI coding assistants are exploding in popularity. Amazon wants a piece of it.
According to an internal document obtained by Business Insider, Amazon Web Services is building a new AI coding tool, codenamed Kiro.
The software development application taps into AI agents to analyze user prompts and existing data, generating code in “near real-time,” the document said.
Kiro is a web and desktop app that can be customized to work with first-party and third-party AI agents, Amazon explained in the document. It also taps into knowledge bases, extensions, and themes further enhancing developer productivity.
Kiro will feature a multi-modal interface, allowing developers to input not just text but also visual diagrams and other contextual information, the document stated.
AWS offers an existing AI coding assistant called Amazon Q. The document obtained by BI suggests that Kiro may be a broader application that taps into multiple AI agents to automate or speed up many aspects of software development.
The tool is expected to be able to auto-generate technical design documents, flag potential issues, and offer code optimizations, Amazon explained in its internal document.
“There is an opportunity to reimagine how AI is used to build software at an exponentially faster rate of innovation and higher product quality,” the company wrote.
Amazon disses other AI coding tools
The internal document critiques existing AI coding tools as being locked into “code-centric” interfaces that slow developers down. Kiro aims to “democratize” software creation, minimizing time-to-code and maximizing productivity, it said.
AWS had considered launching Kiro in late June, according to the document, though it remains uncertain whether that timeline is still in effect.
AWS’s spokesperson declined to comment on Kiro specifically, but told BI that the company is working on AI agent features for its existing products, like the Q developer tool.
“AI agents are quickly transforming the developer experience, and we are rapidly creating innovative new approaches to software development that take full advantage of these powerful agentic capabilities,” the spokesperson said. “We’re only getting started.”
‘Explosion of coding agents’
AI coding assistants have seen a sharp surge in growth lately.
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CEO Andy Jassy called out the growth of AI tools such as Cursor and Vercel during Amazon’s earnings call last week, highlighting an “explosion of coding agents” among AWS customers.
Google and Microsoft both said that around 30% of their code is now written by AI. David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar, recently called coding assistants the “first big break-out application of AI,” noting explosive growth in tools like Cursor and Replit.
“The ramifications of moving from a world of code scarcity to code abundance are profound,” Sacks wrote on X last week.
Startups in the space are attracting significant attention. Anysphere, which built Cursor, raised a huge funding round recently, and OpenAI agreed to buy AI coding startup Windsurf for $3 billion.
AI may change the role of human coders
By 2028, 9 out of 10 enterprise software engineers will use AI coding assistants, up from less than 14% in early 2024, according to Gartner estimates. It’s unclear how this will reshape the role of human coders.
Last year, AWS CEO Matt Garman said it’s possible that most software developers will not be coding in the future because of new AI tools, and that Amazon has to help employees “upskill and learn about new technologies” to boost their productivity, BI previously reported.
Amazon faced early hurdles with its Q coding assistant, sparking internal concerns over high costs and lackluster performance compared to rivals like Microsoft’s Copilot, BI previously reported. The company’s spokesperson said user experience with generative AI is “constantly evolving” and pointed to customers, including Deloitte and ADP, that saw productivity gains with Amazon Q.
Amazon believes tools like Kiro will simplify common tasks, such as integrating Stripe payments, while empowering developers to do more with less, according to the document.
“With Kiro, developers read less but comprehend more, code less but build more, and review less but release more,” it said.
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