Amazon Expands Claude Code and Codex Access to Employees
Amazon is rolling out Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex to all corporate employees. As a result, the company is reversing earlier policies that limited engineers to the in-house Kiro coding assistant and required approval for third-party tools.
In a note to staff, Jim Haughwout, VP of Amazon Software Builder Experience, said Claude Code is already available company-wide, while Codex will launch on May 12. “To help you invent more for customers, we are expanding the agentic AI tools available to you,” Haughwout wrote.
Both tools will operate through Amazon Bedrock and AWS infrastructure. Therefore, teams will no longer need to manage their own setup or capacity planning. In addition, a company spokesperson confirmed that access is now standardized, which removes the need for separate approvals.
Policy Reversal Reflects Broader AI Strategy
The decision marks a major shift from previous internal policies. In late 2025, an internal memo identified Kiro as the preferred AI coding tool and stated the company would “not plan to support additional, third-party AI development tools”.
However, employee frustration reportedly grew in early 2026. Many engineers preferred Claude Code, especially those responsible for promoting it to AWS customers while being unable to use it internally for production work.
At the same time, the rollout highlights the company’s deepening partnerships with major AI firms. Earlier this year, Amazon announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a larger funding round that valued the company at $730 billion. Under the agreement, OpenAI committed to using 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity through AWS and spending $100 billion on cloud services over eight years.
Meanwhile, OpenAI added its latest models and Codex to Amazon Bedrock in April. The company has also invested $8 billion in Anthropic, whose Claude models already support Kiro’s core features.
Kiro Still Plays a Central Role
Despite the broader rollout, Amazon says Kiro will remain an important part of its AI coding strategy. “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.
Previously, the company aimed for 80% weekly Kiro usage among developers. Still, by hosting external tools on its own cloud infrastructure, Amazon can maintain oversight of security and compliance while offering employees more flexibility.
