AWS Public Sector Blog
EdTech announcements and AI customer success stories: Highlights from the AWS re:Invent 2024 EdTech AI Innovation Forum
During AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted a forum exclusively for education technology (EdTech) companies to explore how EdTechs are using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver innovative solutions that support learners and educators and drive business value. Five pioneering EdTech companies across two expert panel discussions showcased how they use AI-powered AWS programs and resources to benefit students, teachers, and school administrators around the world.
Learn more about the announcements, innovations, and customer success stories from AWS re:Invent to inspire EdTech innovation in 2025.
Announcements
New AWS Education Equity Initiative commits $100M to digital learning solutions
To improve educational outcomes worldwide, Amazon announced that it is committing up to $100 million in cloud technology and technical resources over the next five years to help EdTechs and other organizations reach more learners with innovative digital solutions. Today, over half a billion learners cannot access digital learning services. Generative AI has the potential to reduce that number drastically.
Through the AWS Education Equity Initiative, Amazon will empower existing, dedicated learning organizations to extend their reach by creating new and innovative digital solutions that help expand access to education worldwide. As part of the application process, candidates must demonstrate how their proposed solution will benefit students from underserved and underrepresented communities. Learn more about the initiative and apply now.
Amazon Bedrock adds over 25 new features
AWS announced over two dozen new features for Amazon Bedrock that will enable EdTech companies to build generative AI applications more quickly, flexibly, and cost-effectively. Several features enhance guardrails and advance the responsible use of generative AI. The newly launched Amazon Nova foundation models, available exclusively in Amazon Bedrock, can lower costs and reduce latency for almost any generative AI task. These new Amazon Bedrock features demonstrate AWS’s commitment to supporting the development of AI-powered solutions that solve business challenges and deliver results for customers.
Leveraging AI on AWS for innovation in education
During the AWS reinvent EdTech AI Innovation Forum, five EdTech companies shared how they use generative AI on Amazon Bedrock and other AWS resources to solve critical challenges facing educational institutions. They shared three primary use cases:
- Supporting students on-demand with personalized services
Students frequently have questions about assessments and course material outside of class when educators are unavailable. To give students the support they need, when they need it, the California-based startup Praxis AI uses Amazon Bedrock to create a personalized digital twin of every faculty member for every student. The technology lets teachers choose the course materials and trusted sources that inform the AI teaching assistant, which supplements traditional teaching methods and provides 24/7 student support. Last semester, student use of Praxis AI digital twins rose 15x—with several classes seeing a full letter grade improvement after using the AI teaching assistant.
Anthology, a global EdTech, combines AWS technology, generative AI, and Anthology’s expert staff in their latest innovation to proactively and reactively support students. Anthology uses Amazon Bedrock with Amazon Connect and QnAbot on AWS to drive student success and boost retention. The solution incorporates AI-powered tools like natural language processing (NLP)-based virtual assistants for proactive and on-demand support, predictive analytics for early intervention with at-risk students, and personalized guidance and resources. Because Anthology combines a learning management solution, student information system, and customer relationship management solutions in one place, Anthology can apply generative AI on a wide variety of data to infer what support students need during their learning journey, from the school application process through graduation. Anthology builds all of its solutions in alignment with its trusted AI approach.
- Reducing the load on educators
Generative AI tools can also give teachers what they need most: more time. The Brazilian company SOMOS is currently piloting an intelligent assistant, named Plu, to support teachers with lesson plans, custom activities, and other learning resources that optimize their time. With this first of several projects leveraging AWS’s generative AI tools, the company aims to reach over 7,000 schools in Brazil.
StrongMind, an Arizona-based EdTech, has built a dynamic and engaging digital learning platform that uses Amazon Bedrock to understand and respond to each user’s unique context, regardless of their role—whether a teacher, guardian, administrator, or student. The technology recognizes individual action items, achievements, and challenges, providing tailored support and recommendations to help users succeed.
- Promoting responsible use of generative AI in education
Instructure, an EdTech serving tens of millions of educators and students globally, is also helping teachers save time and expand their reach with its Discussion Summaries feature. Built using Amazon Bedrock, Discussion Summaries allows educators to quickly understand student insights, questions, and understanding in courses of any size.
As more EdTechs embrace generative AI solutions, they strive to make these solutions as responsible, secure, and transparent as possible for their customers. During the EdTech AI Innovation Forum, Instructure shared how they publish “AI Nutrition Facts”. Like the nutrition labels on supermarket food, these facts help educators and administrators understand which large language model (LLM) a generative AI solution uses, how it was trained, how an application uses data, and more.
To further responsible AI use, AWS also announced new AI Service Cards during re:Invent for multiple generative AI services. These AI Service Cards provide a single source of truth about intended use cases and limitations, responsible AI design choices, performance optimization best practices, and more. By offering these cards, AWS aims to empower customers with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about the AI services they use in their applications and workflows.
Looking ahead at 2025 for EdTechs
As generative AI tools continue to evolve and mature, the sky is the limit for how EdTech companies can use them to solve persistent challenges. The sector continues to be a dynamic hub for innovation, and access to the right tools and trusted advisors is critical for success.
AWS has a team dedicated exclusively to working with EdTechs of all sizes and levels of sophistication. As the generative AI landscape continues to evolve, the AWS EdTech team can help EdTech organizations design, deploy, and go-to-market with innovative solutions that improve education outcomes around the world. Learn more about our generative AI capabilities in our Generative AI Innovation Center and discover how AWS supports EdTech companies to start, expand, and optimize their business.
Read related stories from the AWS Public Sector Blog:
- AWS Education Equity Initiative: Applying generative AI to educate the next wave of innovators
- Transforming student communications: How Dallas College modernized its call center with AWS
- How the Wharton School built a virtual TA chat assistant with generative AI on AWS
- How Penn State built an all-in-one campus resource app on Modo Labs’ development platform using AWS