AWS announced on August 31, 2026, the acquisition of Amsterdam-based DuckLabs, the company behind the open source analytical database DuckDB. While DuckDB remains under its existing independent foundation and MIT license, AWS plans to integrate its in-process query speed with enterprise services such as Amazon S3, Redshift, and Athena. Co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will continue leading technical development.

Several operational updates were released across AWS platforms. Amazon ECS introduced automatic detection and recovery for container instances that lose control plane connectivity, providing AGENT_CONNECTIVITY health events. AWS Lambda launched public preview runtimes for Node.js 26 and Python 3.15, allowing for compatibility testing before general availability. Additionally, AWS IoT Core now supports native InfluxDB rule actions for time-series data, and Amazon GameLift Servers added built-in DDoS protection for network and transport layer attacks at no extra cost.

Machine learning and infrastructure enhancements include expanded Ray support for Amazon SageMaker HyperPod, enabling resilient training and inference for multi-node clusters orchestrated by Amazon EKS. This integration allows developers to use Amazon SageMaker Studio for cluster management and automated dashboarding. Meanwhile, Amazon EC2 celebrated its 20th anniversary, growing from a single instance type to over 1,200 types across 39 Regions, supported by custom silicon like Graviton5 and Trainium3 chips.

The company also highlighted the release of Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), an Apache 2.0 open specification designed to standardize how AI agents discover and describe tools across distributed cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments. Complementing this, AWS released an Agent Toolkit for the AWS CLI that connects coding assistants—including Claude Code and Cursor—to thousands of AWS APIs via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Finally, AWS announced upcoming regional summits in Zurich, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and Dubai, alongside community-led conferences in Tokyo and Warsaw throughout September 2026.

AWS announced on August 31, 2026, the acquisition of Amsterdam-based DuckLabs, the company behind the open source analytical database DuckDB. While DuckDB remains under its existing independent foundation and MIT license, AWS plans to integrate its in-process query speed with enterprise services such as Amazon S3, Redshift, and Athena. Co-founders Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will continue leading technical development.

Several operational updates were released across AWS platforms. Amazon ECS introduced automatic detection and recovery for container instances that lose control plane connectivity, providing AGENT_CONNECTIVITY health events. AWS Lambda launched public preview runtimes for Node.js 26 and Python 3.15, allowing for compatibility testing before general availability. Additionally, AWS IoT Core now supports native InfluxDB rule actions for time-series data, and Amazon GameLift Servers added built-in DDoS protection for network and transport layer attacks at no extra cost.

Machine learning and infrastructure enhancements include expanded Ray support for Amazon SageMaker HyperPod, enabling resilient training and inference for multi-node clusters orchestrated by Amazon EKS. This integration allows developers to use Amazon SageMaker Studio for cluster management and automated dashboarding. Meanwhile, Amazon EC2 celebrated its 20th anniversary, growing from a single instance type to over 1,200 types across 39 Regions, supported by custom silicon like Graviton5 and Trainium3 chips.

The company also highlighted the release of Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), an Apache 2.0 open specification designed to standardize how AI agents discover and describe tools across distributed cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments. Complementing this, AWS released an Agent Toolkit for the AWS CLI that connects coding assistants—including Claude Code and Cursor—to thousands of AWS APIs via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Finally, AWS announced upcoming regional summits in Zurich, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and Dubai, alongside community-led conferences in Tokyo and Warsaw throughout September 2026.