Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said Thursday that the company’s AI software assistant, Amazon Q, has saved “4,500 developer-years” for its software teams.
In an X.com post, Jasey noted that updating foundational software is “one of the most tedious tasks for software development teams.”
“It’s not new feature work, and it doesn’t feel like you’re moving the experience forward. As a result, this work is either dreaded or put off for more exciting work—or both,” Jassy explained.
However, with Amazon Q, the company’s assistant for software development, this task has become significantly easier.
By integrating its new capabilities into Amazon’s internal systems, the company has seen the average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 drop from what typically takes 50 developer-days to just a few hours.
“We estimate this has saved us the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years of work (yes, that number is crazy but, real),” Jassy highlighted.
In less than six months, Amazon has upgraded over 50% of its production Java systems to modernized versions, notably faster and with much less effort than previously possible. Jassy also said that developers were able to ship 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without making any additional changes.
Beyond the significant reduction in effort for developers, these upgrades have also improved security and lowered infrastructure costs, leading to an estimated $260 million in annualized efficiency gains.
“This is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q,” Jassy added.
The AI assistant has been a “game changer,” he continued, with the team behind it already working on adding more transformations for developers to leverage.