“What does it take to build anything you imagine?”
This was the opening question posed at AWS Summit London 2025 and it echoed throughout the day in more ways than one.
Held at ExCeL London, the AWS Summit London 2025 was less of a product showcase and more of a vision statement. AWS made its stance clear: the convergence of data, AI, and cloud innovation isn’t just the future, it’s here.
But for most businesses, there’s a stark gap between access to technology and the ability to extract value from it.
This article is a reflection on what we saw, what matters, and what so many tech companies are still getting wrong.
The Stage: £10 Billion, Generative AI, and a Countrywide Skills Uplift
The headline announcement? AWS is investing £10 billion into UK data centres by 2027. That’s not just capital expenditure — it’s a clear signal that the AI infrastructure arms race is going local.
Simultaneously, AWS committed to upskilling 100,000 UK workers with AI capabilities by 2030 — an important step given the AI talent bottleneck confronting businesses.
As Matt Garman, AWS CEO-designate, noted, “Generative AI is moving from curiosity to core competency.”
With advancements in Amazon Bedrock (AWS’s foundation model platform) — including integrations with Claude 3 and Meta’s Llama 3 — the message was simple: the tools are here. What businesses do with them is the next critical frontier.
Coremont – Clarion, A Real-World Tech Journey
Among the strongest presentations was from Coremont, the fintech company supporting hedge funds and asset managers. Their platform, Clarion, has evolved into a sophisticated, high-performance trading system aimed primarily at Hedge Funds and Asset Managers.
David Bewick (CTO) and Nick Owen (Head of Software Engineering and Partner) detailed how they used a hybrid stack of AWS Lambda, Fargate, and Amazon ECS to build a resilient compute grid one that handles latency-sensitive operations and demanding SLAs with precision.
It was a powerful demonstration of how AWS services can be orchestrated to serve enterprise-grade requirements but also a reminder that even the most impressive tech stack still requires strategic clarity to thrive.
From Vision to Value – The Strategy Disconnect
What stood out more than any single demo or deployment was this. Even with powerful tools, many tech companies still struggle to articulate their value to the customer.
Innovation is often mistaken for strategy. But without the fundamentals — clear value proposition, defined ICPs, strong product-market fit, buyer enablement, and a joined-up GTM engine — technology alone cannot close the gap between potential and performance.
McKinsey’s recent 2024 report found that companies with integrated GTM strategies grow revenue 2.3x faster than those that don’t. Yet most organisations still treat GTM as an afterthought — a tactical function when it should be strategic infrastructure.
The truth is:
- AI won’t fix a broken message.
- Infrastructure won’t compensate for a weak value prop.
- No sales tool will save you if your buyer doesn’t know why you matter.
What the Best Companies Do Differently
- They define success before they build: Strategy isn’t a layer — it’s the foundation.
- They align teams around the buyer journey: Marketing, sales, product, and customer success are not silos.
- They speak human: Clear messaging, grounded in customer impact, wins every time.
As we saw at AWS Summit, companies like Coremont, The Economist and Formula One – are combining tech with tactical clarity.
That’s what’s required in 2025 not just infrastructure or AI experiments, but GTM precision at every layer.
Final Thought:
You can’t “out-tech” a strategy problem.