After pushback, Amazon rolls out Claude Code, Codex to all employees

Amazon is formally rolling out Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex to all corporate employees, pushing beyond its in-house Kiro tool.

In a note to staff, obtained by Business Insider, VP of Amazon Software Builder Experience Jim Haughwout said Claude Code would be available company-wide immediately, with OpenAI's Codex set to follow on May 12. Both tools will run on Amazon Bedrock and be managed through Amazon Web Services, saving the need to set up infrastructure or manage capacity, the note stated.

"To help you invent more for customers, we are expanding the agentic Al tools available to you," Haughwout said in the note.

The move significantly broadens Amazon's use of outside AI coding tools. Until recently, Claude Code wasn't formally approved for production use, forcing employees to seek special clearance. That restriction had fueled complaints from engineers who preferred it over AWS's in-house Kiro tool, Business Insider previously reported.

The rollout also reflects Amazon's deepening partnerships with leading AI labs, including Anthropic and OpenAI.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the company is now "standardizing" access to Claude Code and Codex, eliminating the need for separate approvals to officially use them.

"At Amazon, we've long held there's no one-size-fits-all approach to how our teams innovate," the spokesperson said. "Our builders are using Kiro for agentic coding, and now with both Claude Code and Codex running on AWS, we are making additional tools available as well."

From resistance to rollout

Amazon engineers had been vocal about the lack of access to Claude Code for production work, particularly as competing tools gained traction. The restrictions became a point of friction inside the company, with some employees arguing that Amazon risked falling behind in developer productivity.

Now, the company is scaling both Claude Code and Codex across its corporate workforce, a sign that leadership views AI coding assistants as essential infrastructure rather than optional add-ons.

By running Claude Code and Codex through Bedrock, Amazon can keep usage within its own cloud environment, maintaining tighter control over data security and compliance while still giving employees access to cutting-edge models.

"Both run on Bedrock, where all inference runs," Haighwout said in the note. "Both will have easy install for all Amazon builders."

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that internal teams are still "primarily using" Kiro, which has been adopted by 83% of the company's engineers.

Amazon has invested billions of dollars in both Anthropic and OpenAI in recent months.

In February, Amazon announced a major new partnership with OpenAI, investing up to $50 billion in the AI company. In exchange, OpenAI agreed to use Amazon's Trainium chips and work with AWS on customized models and a new AI agent service built on Amazon's cloud.

At the same time, Amazon has doubled down on its relationship with Anthropic. In April, the company said it would invest up to an additional $25 billion in the startup, on top of the $8 billion it had already pledged. Anthropic, in turn, has committed to buying $100 billion worth of Trainium chips.

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