Amazon Ditches In-House AI Coding Tool Kiro, Admits Competitors Outperform It

In November, Amazon executives sent an internal memo to employees urging them to adopt Kiro, the company’s in-house AI code-generating tool, over third-party alternatives. The memo stated,

“While we continue to support existing tools in use today, we do not plan to support additional third party, AI development tools. As part of our builder community, you all play a critical role shaping these products and we use your feedback to aggressively improve them.”

This directive was unusual given Amazon’s massive investments in rival AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, which are locked in a fierce competition to dominate the AI coding market. Yet, despite Amazon’s financial backing, its own tool, Kiro, lagged far behind.

Six months later, Amazon has reversed course. According to Business Insider, the company is now conceding to employee demands for access to OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude. The decision underscores the intense pressure AI companies face to maintain a competitive edge and avoid financial setbacks.

The reversal is particularly awkward for Amazon, which has deep cloud-driven partnerships with key players in the AI space. It also highlights the failure of Amazon’s own AI coding tools, which have been linked to recent service outages caused by poorly implemented AI-generated code.

In a note to staff obtained by Business Insider, Jim Haughwout, Amazon’s VP of Software Builder Experience, announced that Claude Code would be made available immediately, with Codex following the next week. While not a full surrender, both tools will operate on Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed AWS service providing secure access to cutting-edge AI models.

This shift suggests Amazon acknowledges its flagship tool, Kiro, cannot match the performance of competitors.

“To help you invent more for customers, we are expanding the agentic AI tools available to you,”

Earlier this year, Amazon developers grew frustrated with restrictions on using Claude Code, as outlined in the November memo. Some employees questioned the company’s promotion of third-party tools through AWS Bedrock while restricting their internal use.

“Customers will ask why they should trust or use a tool that we did not approve for internal use,”

Despite the optics, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that teams are still “primarily using” Kiro, claiming that 83% of engineers at the company rely on it.