AWS Expands EC2 Instance Options and Bolsters AI Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to rapidly expand its cloud offerings, with recent announcements focusing on new EC2 instance types and enhancements to its AI and machine learning services. As of February 2026, AWS offers over 1,160 Amazon EC2 instance types, demonstrating a commitment to providing a wide range of options for diverse workloads.

New EC2 M8azn Instances Deliver High Performance

The general availability of Amazon EC2 M8azn instances represents a significant addition to the AWS compute portfolio. These general-purpose, high-frequency, high-network instances are powered by fifth-generation AMD EPYC processors, achieving a maximum CPU frequency of 5 GHz. Compared to the previous generation M5zn instances, M8azn instances deliver up to 2x compute performance, 4.3x higher memory bandwidth, and a 10x larger L3 cache. They also provide up to 2x networking throughput and up to 3x Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) throughput compared with M5zn instances.

Built on the AWS Nitro System using sixth-generation Nitro Cards, M8azn instances are designed for demanding workloads such as real-time financial analytics, high-performance computing, high-frequency trading, CI/CD pipelines, gaming, and simulation modeling across industries like automotive, aerospace, energy, and telecommunications. The instances feature a 4:1 ratio of memory to vCPU and are available in 9 sizes ranging from 2 to 96 vCPUs with up to 384 GiB of memory, including two bare metal variants. More information can be found on the Amazon EC2 M8azn instance page.

Amazon Bedrock Enhancements Fuel AI Innovation

AWS is also making strides in the AI space with updates to Amazon Bedrock. The service now supports six fully managed open weights models: DeepSeek V3.2, MiniMax M2.1, GLM 4.7, GLM 4.7 Flash, Kimi K2.5, and Qwen3 Coder Next. These models cater to a range of applications, including reasoning, agentic intelligence, and autonomous coding with large output windows. DeepSeek V3.2 and Kimi K2.5 are optimized for reasoning and agentic intelligence, while GLM 4.7 and MiniMax M2.1 excel in autonomous coding. Qwen3 Coder Next and GLM 4.7 Flash offer cost-efficient options for production deployment.

These models are powered by Project Mantle and are compatible with OpenAI API specifications. These new open weight models – DeepSeek v3.2, MiniMax 2.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next – are now available in Kiroa, a spec-driven AI development tool.

Amazon Bedrock also now supports AWS PrivateLink for the bedrock-mantle endpoint, in addition to existing support for the bedrock-runtime endpoint. Project Mantle, a distributed inference engine for large-scale machine learning model serving, powers the bedrock-mantle endpoint. AWS PrivateLink support for OpenAI API-compatible endpoints is available in 14 AWS Regions.

Additional AWS Updates

Several other updates were announced last week:

• Amazon EKS Auto Mode: Enhanced logging is now available using Amazon CloudWatch Vended Logs, providing cost-effective log collection for managed Kubernetes capabilities.
• Amazon OpenSearch Serverless: Collection Groups allow sharing OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUs) across collections with different AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys, reducing costs while maintaining security.
• Amazon RDS: Users can now configure backup retention periods and preferred backup windows during snapshot restore operations, eliminating the need for post-restoration modifications. This is available for all Amazon RDS database engines and Amazon Aurora editions.

Looking Ahead

AWS continues to innovate at a rapid pace, providing customers with a growing suite of tools and services to meet their evolving needs. For a comprehensive list of AWS announcements, visit the What’s New with AWS page. Upcoming events include AWS Summits in Paris, London, and Bengaluru, the AWS AI and Data Conference, and various AWS Community Days.