AWS unveils Bedrock AgentCore, a new platform for building enterprise AI agents with open source frameworks and tools
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Cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) believes AI agents will change how we all work and interact with information, and that enterprises need a platform that allows them to build and deploy agents at scale — all in one place.
Today at its New York Summit, AWS unveiled Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, a new enterprise-grade platform designed to build, deploy, and operate AI agents securely and at scale.
Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS Vice President of Agentic AI, said during the keynote that AgentCore “helps organizations move beyond experiments to production-ready agent systems that can be trusted with your most critical business processes.”
AgentCore is a modular stack of services—available in preview—that gives developers the core infrastructure needed to move AI agents from prototype to production, including runtime, memory, identity, observability, API integration, and tools for web browsing and code execution.
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“We believe that agents are going to fundamentally change how we use tools and the internet,” said Deepak Singh, AWS Vice President of Databases and AI. “The line between an agent and an application is getting blurrier.”
AgentCore builds on the existing Bedrock Agents framework, launched in late 2024, but dramatically expands capabilities by supporting any agent framework or foundation model—not just those hosted within Bedrock.
That includes compatibility with open-source toolkits like CrewAI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, and AWS’s own Strands Agents SDK.
What AWS Bedrock AgentCore includes
- AgentCore Runtime: A serverless, low-latency execution environment that supports multimodal workloads and long-running sessions with session isolation.
- AgentCore Memory: Long- and short-term memory services that let agents learn from past interactions and persist contextual knowledge across sessions.
- AgentCore Identity: OAuth-based identity and access management, allowing agents to act on behalf of users across systems like GitHub, Slack, or Salesforce.
- AgentCore Observability: Built-in dashboards, debugging, and telemetry tools with support for OpenTelemetry, LangSmith, and Datadog.
- AgentCore Gateway: Converts internal APIs, Lambda functions, and third-party services into agent-compatible tools using the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
- AgentCore Browser: Provides headless browser access for agents to autonomously interact with websites.
- AgentCore Code Interpreter: A secure environment for executing code generated by agents for analysis and visualization.
AgentCore also integrates with the AWS Marketplace, enabling teams to discover and deploy pre-built agents and tools.
According to Singh, AgentCore has been designed with interoperability in mind. It supports emerging industry standards like MCP and Google’s Agent-2-Agent (A2A) protocol. Features such as AgentCore Identity and Gateway ensure agents have clear permissioning and can interact securely with internal systems and third-party APIs.
AWS’s launch puts it squarely into the center of what’s quickly becoming one of the most competitive segments in enterprise AI.
OpenAI’s Agents SDK and Google’s Gemini-based Agents SDK are both pushing similar visions of end-to-end agent development platforms.
Writer’s AI HQ and startups like Cognition (maker of Devin) are also building tools for managing autonomous software agents.
“Agents are the most impactful change we’ve seen in ages,” Sivasubramanian said. “With agents comes a shift to service as a software. This is a tectonic change in how software is built, deployed and operated.”
Customer adoption and early use cases
Several companies granted early access to AgentCore are already building production-grade agentic applications across industries including finance, healthcare, marketing, and content management.
Cloud document and file storage company Box is exploring ways to extend its content management tools using Strands Agents and Bedrock AgentCore Runtime.
CTO Ben Kus said the integration gives Box customers “top tier security and compliance” while scaling AI capabilities across enterprise environments.
Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco is using AgentCore to support its development of hyper-personalized, secure digital banking experiences. Chief Technology Officer Carlos Eduardo Mazzei said the new platform “will help us deliver an intuitive banking experience with the efficiency of automation and personalization customers expect.”
In the healthcare space, Innovaccer has built a new protocol—HMCP (Healthcare Model Context Protocol)—on top of AgentCore Gateway. CEO and co-founder Abhinav Shashank called Gateway a “game-changer” that allows the company to convert existing APIs into agent-compatible tools at scale while maintaining trust, compliance, and operational efficiency.
Marketing firm Epsilon is leveraging AgentCore to accelerate campaign build times and improve engagement. Prashanth Athota, SVP of Software Engineering, said the company expects to reduce build times by up to 30% and enhance customer journey personalization.
Availability and pricing
AgentCore is now available in preview in select AWS regions including US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Europe (Frankfurt). It’s free to try until September 16, 2025, with pricing to begin thereafter.
Pricing for AgentCore is entirely consumption-based, with no upfront commitments or minimum fees. Each module—Runtime, Memory, Identity, Observability, Gateway, Browser, and Code Interpreter—is billed independently and can be used a la carte or together.
Runtime, Browser, and Code Interpreter services are priced per second, based on CPU and memory usage, with rates set at $0.0895 per vCPU-hour and $0.00945 per GB-hour.
Gateway charges $0.005 per 1,000 tool API invocations, $0.025 per 1,000 search queries, and $0.02 per 100 tools indexed per month.
Memory costs are based on data volume: $0.25 per 1,000 short-term memory events, $0.75 per 1,000 long-term memories stored (or $0.25 with custom strategies), and $0.50 per 1,000 retrievals.
AgentCore Identity costs $0.010 per 1,000 token or API key requests, though it’s included at no extra charge when used via Runtime or Gateway.
Observability is billed via Amazon CloudWatch rates.
To learn more or get started, AWS directs developers to its AgentCore documentation, GitHub samples, and a dedicated Discord server.
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