Amazon ships its own models. Now every cloud you use has one
Nova was announced at re:Invent on 3 December 2024. The pattern matters more than the models: your cloud provider is now also a model provider.
On 3 December 2024, at AWS re:Invent, Amazon introduced Nova, a family of foundation models: Micro, Lite, Pro and Premier for text and multimodal work, plus Canvas for images and Reel for video. They run on Amazon Bedrock alongside models from other providers.
Benchmark placement is not the story. The story is that the three large cloud providers now all sell their own models, inside the infrastructure you already rent.
What this changes for a buyer
Procurement gets simpler. If your data already sits with a cloud provider, using their model means no new vendor, no new data processing agreement, no new invoice. For an SME with no procurement department, that friction reduction is worth real money.
The residency question gets easier to answer. Major providers offer European regions, and in some cases Swiss ones. « Which region does inference run in? » is a question with a documented answer, which is more than most AI vendors can offer.
And the lock-in gets quieter. This is the part to watch. A model that is convenient because it is already inside your cloud is a model you will not evaluate against alternatives. Convenience is how concentration happens without a decision.
The question to ask before defaulting to it
Not « is it the best model? » For most SME tasks — summarising, classifying, drafting — several models are good enough and the difference will not be visible in your work.
Ask instead: if we standardise on this, what would it take to move off it in two years? If the answer is « rewrite everything », that is a cost you are accepting today for convenience today.
The pragmatic position
Using your cloud provider’s model is often the right call for a first project. It is the shortest path from idea to working, and a first project that ships beats a perfect one that does not.
Just write down that you chose convenience, and what you would do if the price or terms changed. A documented shortcut is a decision. An undocumented one is a habit, and habits are what you discover during a renewal.