Amazon gives employees Claude Code, Codex after internal demand

Amazon has formally expanding internal access to the external AI coding assistants by rolling out Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex for all the corporate employees after months of internal demand, according to a report by Business Insider. Until recently, Claude Code was not approved for the production use which forced the engineers to seek special clearance. That restriction fueled frustration among the developers who preferred it over Amazon’s in-house tool Kiro. Now, Amazon is scaling both Claude Code and Codex across its workforce, highlighting that leadership also views AI coding assistant as an important part of infrastructure rather than optional add-ons.As reported by Business Insider, in a note to the staff, Jim Haughwout, VP of Amazon Software Builder Experience, said Claude Code would be available company-wide immediately, with Codex set to follow on May 12. Both the external AI tools will run on Amazon Bedrock and will be managed via AWS. This will eliminate the need to for teams to set up infrastructure or manage capacity. “To help you invent more for customers, we are expanding the agentic AI tools available to you,” Haughwout wrote.By running such tools via Bedrock, Amazon also makes sure that the usage stays within its own cloud environment, maintaining tighter control over data security and compliance while giving employees access to cutting-edge models.An Amazon spokesperson also confirmed that the company is now “standardizing” access to Claude Code and Codex, removing the need for separate approvals. While 83% of engineers still primarily use Kiro, the company is broadening options to reflect different team preferences. “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,” the spokesperson said.The rollout underscores Amazon’s growing ties with leading AI labs. In February, Amazon announced a partnership with OpenAI, investing up to $50 billion in exchange for OpenAI’s use of Trainium chips and AWS for customized models. In April, Amazon pledged up to $25 billion more into Anthropic, on top of its earlier $8 billion commitment, with Anthropic agreeing to purchase $100 billion worth of Trainium capacity.