AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Sonnet 5 on AWS, Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents, and service updates
AWS announces Claude Sonnet 5 availability, Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents GA, OpenSearch optimization for log analytics, SageMaker AI scaling improvements, and key AWS service availability changes.
A couple of editions ago I wrote about what I find so energizing about working with startups. Last week I spent a few days with the AWS Startups team, hearing founders discuss real problems they solve. One founder, Marco Negreiros of EyeCare Health, highlighted that over 70% of Brazilian municipalities lack an ophthalmologist. His solution is a smartphone-based vision test to expand eye care access. This week’s AWS updates include several key launches: Amazon EC2 C9g and C9gd instances powered by AWS Graviton5 processors deliver up to 25% better compute performance and larger cache; AWS CloudFormation Express mode accelerates infrastructure deployment with rapid confirmation for AI agents and developers; Amazon EKS now supports Kubernetes version rollbacks to reverse upgrades within seven days; AWS Certificate Manager supports ACME protocol for automated TLS certificate issuance and renewal. Major AI-related launches include Claude Sonnet 5 by Anthropic, now available on AWS, offering advanced coding and agentic task capabilities; Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents is generally available, allowing AI agents to securely access desktop applications without modernization; Amazon OpenSearch Service introduces a new engine optimized for log analytics with up to 4x better price-performance; Amazon SageMaker AI supports container image caching, cutting generative AI inference scale-out time by up to half; Amazon CloudWatch now supports creating alarms from log queries in a streamlined workflow. AWS service availability updates effective June 30, 2026, include multiple services moving to maintenance mode, entering sunset, or reaching end of support, such as Amazon Bedrock Agents Classic, Amazon Cognito Sync, Amazon Kendra, AWS Directory Service – Simple AD, and various SageMaker AI features. Upcoming AWS events include AWS Summits and AWS Community Days, including a Community Day in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on August 22. Readers are encouraged to consult AWS documentation or support for guidance on service changes. This roundup is authored by Daniel Abib and is part of the weekly AWS news series.