What changed
AWS announced a series of updates in October 2026, including new AI models and tools designed to enhance agent development and deployment. These updates include the release of Claude Haiku 5.5, OpenAI GPT-6.1 Terra, Amazon Nova 2.5 Sonic, and GLM 5.3 by Z.ai, along with improvements to Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and Strands.
What this means in practice
The new models provide developers with more options for specific tasks. For instance, Claude Haiku 5.5 is tailored for subagents and high-volume, cost-sensitive work, offering around 75% lower costs than its predecessor. OpenAI GPT-6.1 Terra is now generally available on Amazon Bedrock, performing on par with GPT-6 Astra and completing tasks more than three times faster. Amazon Nova 2.5 Sonic improves reasoning and tool-calling accuracy, suitable for real-time customer service interactions. Additionally, GLM 5.3 by Z.ai is available for agentic coding and long-horizon software engineering, with a 1-million-token context window.
Strands now supports building voice agents with Bidi Agents, enabling two-way speech-to-speech interactions. AgentCore CLI version 1.0 is generally available, offering faster startup and support for more resources. AgentCore Gateway now supports model fallback and private target access, ensuring agent availability even if a primary model is throttled.
Limitations and availability
New models like Claude Haiku 5.5 and OpenAI GPT-5.6 are available in AWS GovCloud (US), while GLM 5.3 by Z.ai is available to eligible enterprise customers. TwelveLabs Pegasus 1.5 is available for video processing, and Daybreak Red from OpenAI is available for authorized security work in AWS GovCloud (US-East). Structured outputs are now available for all Claude models on Amazon Bedrock, and Web Search on Amazon Bedrock supports domain filtering and user location for requests made with the OpenAI Responses API.
