Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a $1 billion initiative to embed Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) teams to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.

The initiative announced Tuesday supports major partners like the National Football League (NFL), and Southwest Airlines.

The NFL has millions of fans who want to consume football content throughout the year, including during the offseason.

"We innovate at the pace and scale needed to meet the high expectations of our fans," said Gary Brantley, chief information officer of the NFL. He added that the organization wanted to create new digital experiences for fans, so it hired AWS FDE engineers to build features alongside the NFL’s and launched the production in just weeks.

The two companies created new fan-facing products like NFL Fantasy AI and NFL IQ that allow fans to interact with NFL data like never before.

The focus remains on what AWS calls solving challenges during the "last mile" of AI implementation by using a technique called "fast-cycle engineering teams" that operate on a "45-45-45" timeline, a term typically used to refer to a specific operational schedule used to structure the setup and breakdown of tasks.

“AWS FDE embeds AWS frontier teams — working with purpose-built agents — directly inside customer teams,” Francesca Vasquez, vice president of Frontier AI Engineering and Services, AWS, wrote in a blog post published Tuesday.

Experienced engineers, many of whom build AWS AI services, will partner with customer business, engineering, and security teams to build and deploy production AI systems with data, governance, and processes.

When MediaPost spoke with Global Head of Publisher Ad-Tech Solutions at AWS Stephanie Layser during Cannes Lions, she said conversations with customers revolved around opportunities to use AI agents to make processes more efficient.

“Many times, it would take a week or two to get a campaign sold and live,” Layser said, because of the many steps required to complete the process.

When agents are allowed to complete processes and tasks, they take much less time.

This is where AWS FDE comes in. Unlike traditional consulting that assesses, recommends, and treats each deployment as a standalone project, AWS FDE will build for the specific company.

Along with agentic systems running in a client’s own AWS environment, they gain lasting AI skills, workflows, and patterns they can use to innovate independently. Deployments are structured around shared goals and business results, not billable hours.

“It’s an exciting time for media, because once you can operate the workflow much more simply, you can sell to more advertisings,” Layser said. “It lets you operate the campaign and optimize in mid-flight.”

Durring a panel at Cannes that Layser participated in, a representative from consulting firm McKinsey & Company said advertisers have said they intend to spend more this year, because automation and agentic development encourages return on investments.