There were several “firsts” at the start of AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas this week. It was the first time Andy Jassy was not on stage to deliver the opening keynote, and it was the first time his successor as AWS chief executive – Adam Selipsky – was accorded the honor.

It was also the first time in two years that Amazon Web Services Inc. was able to hold its signature event with in-person attendance of 28,000 masked and vaccinated participants. What did not change was AWS’ continued dominant position in the cloud computing world.

“Amazon is under a ton of competitive pressure, at least from an industry standpoint, and everyone is trying to catch up,” said John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “It’s the same theme every year. Amazon is out in front, and the lead just keeps getting extended.”

Furrier spoke with co-host Dave Vellante during theCUBE’s keynote analysis for AWS re:Invent. They discussed Amazon’s continued strong revenue growth and the impact of its latest announcements for custom silicon products. (* Disclosure below.)

Revenue grows with innovation

As a measure of Amazon’s continued leadership position, the cloud unit is expected to generate over $60 billion in revenue this year, according to Vellante. That is far ahead of the $38 billion projected for its nearest rival – Microsoft Corp.

Neither a change in AWS leadership at the top nor attempts by the federal government to bring antitrust action against Amazon were expected to slow the company’s growth, based on a recent survey conducted by SiliconANGLE.

“We ran a survey with our community on what could disrupt Amazon,” Vellante noted. “Our survey respondents said there’s a 60%-plus probability that Amazon will be disrupted by other factors, and the number one reason why they could be disrupted was self-inflicted wounds. That normally happens when companies stop innovating, when they rest on their laurels.”

Perhaps in response to that possibility, Selipsky made several new product and service announcements during his Tuesday keynote. These included the launch of compute intensive, AI-powered custom chips.

“If you are seriously writing software as an owner on the cloud and you want specific advantages of speed and performance, you are going to want the custom silicon that’s purpose built for your application and write code to that stack,” Furrier said. “There is a whole other level of platform as a service that is coming out of this re:Invent.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for AWS re:Invent. Amazon Web Services Inc. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: AWS re:Invent