AWS expands student programs, launches Las Vegas Local Zone, and rolls out batch scaling for EC2

Student Rewards program launches on AWS Builder Center

AWS unveiled a new benefit targeting verified higher education students through its Builder Center. After confirming enrollment via SheerID and completing a Builder Center profile, eligible students gain access to 12 months of premium AWS Skill Builder, which includes over 900 courses, hands-on labs, certification exam preparation, and game-based learning modules.

The rewards structure incentivizes ongoing participation. Students earn badges by publishing articles, commenting, and maintaining engagement on the platform. At 7 badges, they receive $10 in AWS Credits. Reaching 14 badges unlocks an additional $20 in credits. At 21 badges, students obtain an AWS Foundational Certification exam voucher valued at $100.

The initiative represents a commitment of over $500 million in resources during the back-to-school season, providing students with training, tools, and certification pathways for cloud and AI careers. The program is available to students 18 years or older enrolled at accredited higher education institutions worldwide, subject to verification and applicable terms.

Infrastructure and compute updates

AWS opened a new Local Zone in Las Vegas, Nevada, supporting Amazon EC2 C7i, M7i, R7i, and C8gn instances alongside Amazon EBS, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, Application Load Balancer, and AWS Direct Connect. The company now operates Local Zones in more than 30 metropolitan areas worldwide. Additionally, AWS added a fourth Availability Zone to the Europe (London) Region, delivering next-generation AI and ML capacity with Trn3 and P6 accelerated instances and general-purpose compute options.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling now supports batch instance termination, allowing users to pass up to 100 instance IDs to the TerminateInstanceInAutoScalingGroup API in a single operation. This reduces the number of API calls required to scale down Auto Scaling groups. The feature targets workloads requiring rapid scale-down, including AI and ML training jobs, container orchestrators, and event-driven architectures that temporarily provision large fleets.

Developer tools and AI model expansions

AWS CloudShell now includes a built-in visual file editor accessible directly from shell sessions using a single edit command. The editor supports syntax highlighting, find-and-replace, multi-line selection, copy-paste, and undo-redo functionality within a single browser session. The tool streamlines workflows for updating deployment scripts, modifying agent steering files, editing CloudFormation templates, and fixing Lambda functions without leaving CloudShell.

Amazon Bedrock expanded its model offerings. SpaceXAI Grok 4.6, a frontier model designed for coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work, is now available on Bedrock with support for the Responses, Chat Completions, and Converse APIs. The model runs on the bedrock-runtime endpoint and works with existing account-level controls including model invocation logging, Amazon CloudWatch metrics, and cost itemization in AWS Cost Explorer.

Amazon Bedrock also expanded API support for OpenAI models, now supporting GPT-5.6 models (Sol, Terra, and Luna) with the Responses, Converse, and Chat Completions APIs. The service introduced cross-Region inference capabilities, with Geo cross-Region inference routing requests within predefined geographies, including new US Geo support, and Global cross-Region inference serving requests from any commercial AWS Region at lower per-token costs.

AgentCore payments reached general availability in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore. The offering includes Quick Create for Coinbase credential provisioning within the AgentCore console, a curated Coinbase Bazar MCP server of pay-per-use x402 endpoints via AgentCore gateway, support for the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), and the "upto" scheme in the x402 protocol for pay-per-inference and dynamic pricing scenarios.

AWS Glue 6.0 delivers pricing reduction and data type enhancements

AWS Glue 6.0 launched with a fully modernized runtime built on Apache Spark 4.1, Python 3.13, and Scala 2.13, delivering 30% lower pricing compared to previous AWS Glue versions. The release adds Iceberg v3 support, introducing the VARIANT data type with automatic shredding for faster reads on semi-structured data, deletion vectors for high-performance row-level updates, geometry and geography data types for spatial processing, and flexible schema evolution capabilities.

Sign-in experience updates and Builder Loft expansion

AWS is gradually rolling out updates to its sign-in and sign-up experience. The redesigned sign-in page introduces a unified email entry point for root users and customers using the new email-based sign-in method, while IAM users continue signing in with their account ID, username, and password. The page also includes sign-in options for customers whose AWS account was created using supported identity providers including Google, GitHub, Apple, or Amazon.com. A redesigned session selection page simplifies viewing and managing multiple active account and role sessions. Organizations relying on browser automation or scripted workflows interacting with the sign-in page should review the changes to understand potential impacts on their configuration.

AWS announced plans to open new Builder Lofts in Berlin, Hyderabad, and São Paulo. Since the first Builder Loft opened in San Francisco in July 2025, it has welcomed more than 22,500 developers. Each new location will operate as a permanent community space offering free workshops, networking events, pitch nights, content creation spaces, and co-working areas. Berlin will emphasize digital sovereignty and security-readiness, Hyderabad will focus on AI and cloud-native architecture, and São Paulo will support Latin America's developer ecosystem.

Recognition and upcoming events

AWS and Amazon WorkSpaces earned recognition as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) for the third consecutive year, evaluated on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Gartner highlighted strengths in operations, geographic strategy, and overall viability. The evaluation marks the first year including Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents, a capability that runs AI agents within the same desktop environment, security perimeter, and audit trail as human users.

Upcoming AWS Summits include events in Zurich (September 2), São Paulo (September 3), Tel Aviv (September 10), and Dubai (September 30). Keynotes and sessions are available on the AWS Summits Global Livestream + On-Demand Hub for registered attendees. AWS Community Days, community-led conferences planned and delivered by community leaders, have upcoming events scheduled in Bolivia, Santa Cruz (August 29), Toronto, Canada (August 29), JAWS SONIC, Tokyo (September 5), and Warsaw, Poland (September 8).