Amazon Web Services unveils AI program, agent plugin in roundup.

Last week, AWS launched the 2026 AWS AI & ML Scholars program, led by Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of AWS Agentic AI. This program aims to provide free AI education to up to 100,000 learners worldwide. The program consists of two phases: a Challenge phase where participants will learn foundational generative AI skills, followed by a fully funded three-month Udacity Nanodegree for the top 4,500 performers. The program is open to anyone 18 or older, with no prior AI or ML experience required. Applications are open until June 24, 2026. To learn more and apply, visit the AWS AI & ML Scholars webpage.

Additionally, the AWS Summit season has kicked off with AWS Summit Paris on April 1, followed by London on April 22. AWS Summits are free in-person events where builders and innovators can learn about Cloud and AI, brainstorm ideas, and network with like-minded individuals. Explore the AWS Summits near you and consider joining in person to expand your knowledge and connections.

Now, let’s delve into some of the recent AWS news highlights:

– Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now offers express configuration, allowing for the creation of a serverless database in seconds with just two clicks. This streamlined setup includes preconfigured defaults for quick and easy database creation and connection.

– Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL is now available on the AWS Free Tier, offering new AWS users $100 in credits upon sign-up. Users can earn an additional $100 in credits by utilizing services like Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

– The Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless has been announced, enabling developers to build, deploy, troubleshoot, and manage serverless applications using AI coding assistants like Kiro, Claude Code, and Cursor. This plugin enhances AI assistants with structured capabilities for building production-ready serverless applications on AWS.

– Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports Kiro and Cursor IDEs as remote IDEs, allowing users to connect from these IDEs to SageMaker Studio for scalable compute resources. This integration enables developers to leverage their existing setup while accessing the capabilities of SageMaker Studio.

– AWS Lambda has increased the file descriptor limit from 1,024 to 4,096 for functions running on Lambda Managed Instances (LMI). This 4x increase allows for running I/O intensive workloads without hitting file descriptor limits.

– AWS Lambda functions on Lambda Managed Instances now support up to 32 GB of memory and 16 vCPUs, enabling users to run compute-intensive workloads like data processing and media transcoding without managing infrastructure. The memory-to-vCPU ratio can be adjusted to suit specific workloads.

– Amazon Polly has introduced the Bidirectional Streaming API, designed for conversational AI applications that generate text or audio incrementally. This API is ideal for large language model (LLM) responses, allowing audio synthesis to begin before the full text is available.

For more AWS announcements and updates, stay tuned to the AWS News Blog and the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events to look out for include AWS Summits in various locations such as Paris, London, Bengaluru, Singapore, Tel Aviv, and Stockholm. Additionally, AWS Community Days are community-led conferences featuring technical discussions and hands-on labs, with upcoming events in San Francisco and Romania.

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with fellow builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Explore the AWS Events and Webinars for upcoming events and developer-focused activities.

That’s all for this week’s roundup. Check back next Monday for more AWS news and announcements!

– Prasad

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Stay tuned for more updates and interesting news from AWS every week!
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