Amazon reported record first-quarter sales late last month, fueled by AI-powered growth in its AWS cloud computing unit which soared 17% to roughly $25 billion. AWS is a major profit center for Amazon, where the division’s operating profit rose nearly 84%, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says AWS’ AI capabilities are ‘reaccelerating’ its growth rate for the cloud business, now at a $100 billion annual run rate.

“There’s a very large opportunity in front of us,” Jassy shared on the earnings call. “I don’t know if any of us has seen a possibility like this in technology in a really long time, for sure since the cloud, perhaps since the internet.”

It’s a bold statement and one that should echo in the ears of CIOs and business tech leaders regarding the enormous opportunities to leverage GenAI to reimagine and reinvent the business.

In Microsoft’s April earnings report, company officials said demand for data center infrastructure to deploy AI models is currently outstripping Microsoft’s supply, according to CNBC.

The demand for AI services demonstrates that companies are doing more than just kicking the tires with AI. Foundry’s 23^rd Annual State of the CIO Study reveals that 49% of the CIOs surveyed identified AI and machine learning as the most strategically important technology initiatives for 2024.

To be sure, many CIOs in the HMG community tell us that many are exploring use cases to achieve productivity gains. And while there are certainly benefits to doing so, some industry experts estimate that 80% of the productivity use cases are commonly applied across companies and don’t offer much in the way of competitive differentiation.

The use of Generative AI offers CIOs and business tech leaders the ability to help CEOs and members of the SLT envision how it can help to identify new business opportunities, profitable products and services, heightened customer experiences and other business benefits.

We’ll be diving further into these discussions at our 16^th Annual New Jersey C-Level Technology Leadership Summit at The Madison Hotel in Morristown, N.J. on May 23.

Meanwhile, as data is the lifeblood of AI initiatives, we’ll be exploring how data should be properly safeguarded with GenAI initiatives along with the role that CISOs and cybersecurity teams can and should play with these efforts at our 8^th Annual New York CISO & Technology Leadership Summit on June 11 at The Harvard Club of New York City.

To learn more about our upcoming New Jersey summit and to register for the event, click here.

To learn more about our New York CISO summit and to register for the event, click here.

We welcome your thoughts on the opportunities and challenges facing CIOs, CISOs and business technology leaders regarding the use of GenAI. Please share your comments below to help keep the dialogue going.