Last week, my team met many developers at Developer Week in San Jose. My colleague, Vinicius Senger delivered a great keynote about renascent software—a new way of building and evolving applications where humans and AI collaborate as co-developers using Kiro. Other colleagues spoke about building and deploying production-ready AI agents. Everyone stayed to ask and hear the questions related to agent memory, multi-agent patterns, meta-tooling and hooks. It was interesting how many developers were actually building agents.

We are continuing to meet developers and hear their feedback at third-party developer conferences. You can meet us at the dev/nexus, the largest and longest-running Java ecosystem conference on March 4-6 in Atlanta. My colleague, James Ward will speak about building AI Agents with Spring and MCP, and Vinicius Senger and Jonathan Vogel will speak about 10 tools and tips to upgrade your Java code with AI. I’ll keep sharing places for you to connect with us.

Last week’s launches
Here are some of the other announcements from last week:

• Claude Sonnet 4.6 model in Amazon Bedrock – You can now use Claude Sonnet 4.6 which offers frontier performance across coding, agents, and professional work at scale. Claude Sonnet 4.6 approaches Opus 4.6 intelligence at a lower cost. It enables faster, high-quality task completion, making it ideal for high-volume coding and knowledge work use cases.
• Amazon EC2 Hpc8a instances powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors – You can use new Hpc8a instances delivering up to 40% higher performance, increased memory bandwidth, and 300 Gbps Elastic Fabric Adapter networking. You can accelerate compute-intensive simulations, engineering workloads, and tightly coupled HPC applications.
• Amazon SageMaker Inference for custom Amazon Nova models – You can now configure the instance types, auto-scaling policies, and concurrency settings for custom Nova model deployments with Amazon SageMaker Inference to best meet your needs.
• Nested virtualization on virtual Amazon EC2 instances – You can create nested virtual machines by running KVM or Hyper-V on virtual EC2 instances. You can leverage this capability for use cases such as running emulators for mobile applications, simulating in-vehicle hardware for automobiles, and running Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows workstations.
• Server-Side Encryption by default in Amazon Aurora – Amazon Aurora further strengthens your security posture by automatically applying server-side encryption by default to all new databases clusters using AWS-owned keys. This encryption is fully managed, transparent to users, and with no cost or performance impact.
• Kiro in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions – You can use Kiro for the development teams behind government missions. Developers in regulated environments can now leverage Kiro’s agentic AI tool with the rigorous security controls required.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Additional updates
Here are some additional news items that you might find interesting:

• Introducing Agent Plugins for AWS – You can see how new open-source Agent Plugins for AWS extend coding agents with skills for deploying applications to AWS. Using the deploy-on-aws plugin, you can generate architecture recommendations, cost estimates, and infrastructure-as-code directly from your coding agent.
• A chat with Byron Cook on automated reasoning and trust in AI systems – You can hear how to verify AI systems doing the right thing using automated reasoning when they generate code or manage critical decisions. Byron Cook’s team has spent a decade proving correctness in AWS and apply those techniques to agentic systems.
• Best practices for deploying AWS DevOps Agent in production – You can read best practices for setting up DevOps Agent Spaces that balance investigation capability with operational efficiency. According to Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS DevOps Agent, a frontier agent that resolves and proactively prevents incidents, has handled thousands of escalations, with an estimated root cause identification rate of over 86% within Amazon.

From AWS community
Here are my personal favorite posts from AWS community:

• Everything You Need to Know About AWS for Your First Developer Job – Your first week as a developer will not look like the tutorials you followed previous. Read Ifeanyi Otuonye’s real-world AWS guide for your first job.
• Let an AI Agent Do Your Job Searching – Still manually checking career pages during a job search? AWS Hero Danielle H. built an AI agent that does the work for you.
• Building the AWS Serverless Power for Kiro – A former AWS Serverless Hero, Gunnar Grosch built a Kiro Power to integrate 25 MCP tools, ten steering guides, and structured decision guidance for the full development lifecycle.

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with community, share knowledge, and access content that supports your development.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits – Join AWS Summits in 2026, free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), and Bengaluru (April 23–24).
• Amazon Nova AI Hackathon – Join developers worldwide to build innovative generative AI solutions using frontier foundation models and compete for $40,000 in prizes across five categories including agentic AI, multimodal understanding, UI automation, and voice experiences during this six-week challenge from February 2nd to March 16th, 2026.
• AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include Ahmedabad (February 28), JAWS Days in Tokyo (March 7), Chennai (March 7), Slovakia (March 11), and Pune (March 21).

Browse here for upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Channy

Time is running out to get your nominations in for the 2026 GeekWire Awards. If you want to help us recognize the outstanding tech entrepreneurs, innovators, deal makers and nonprofit leaders across the Pacific Northwest, submit a nomination today!

Community nominations will close this Wednesday, Feb. 25, for the annual event, which takes place May 7 in Seattle.

The GeekWire Awards, presented by Astound Business Solutions, will take place at Showbox SoDo and feature a VIP reception, sit-down dinner and fun entertainment mixed in. Tickets go fast, and early-bird pricing is available now on half and full tables, so contact events@geekwire.com to reserve your table.

Nominations are being accepted across 12 categories, and robot trophies will be handed out live on stage to winners for Startup of the Year, Next Tech Titan, CEO of the Year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year, AI Innovation of the Year, and more.

Pacific Northwest-based companies and individuals (Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) are eligible to be nominated. The nominations can be submitted by GeekWire readers, and self nominations are permitted. One nomination is as good as 20, so no need to flood the ballot box. Past winners are not eligible in the same category. 

A panel of judges will select five finalists per category and community voting will take place March 16 to April 17 on GeekWire.

Here are the nomination categories:

Leadership and Business

• CEO of the Year
• Young Entrepreneur of the Year
• Next Tech Titan
• Workplace of the Year

Innovation

• Innovation of the Year
• AI Innovation of the Year
• Health Innovation of the Year
• Sustainable Innovation of the Year
• Hardware/Robotics/Physical AI of the Year

Impact

• Startup of the Year
• Deal of the Year
• STEM Educator of the Year

Thanks to the 2026 GeekWire Awards sponsors: Presenting sponsor Astound Business Solutions. Gold sponsors: JLL, Baird, First Tech, Amazon Sustainability, BECU, and Wilson Sonsini. 

PREVIOUSLY: GeekWire Awards 2025 revealed: Community ‘alive and well’ at annual celebration of best in tech

“And the thing about games is, if you get good at one game, you can be good at any game. … They’re all hand-eye coordination and observing patterns.”

That’s a line from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 novel about two friends who build a video game company from nothing — struggling with the tension between art and commerce, and ultimately with the challenges of operating a business at scale.

This describes almost perfectly what Asha Sharma will be attempting to do in her new role leading Microsoft’s Xbox and video-game business: She’ll need to take all the patterns she’s observed as an executive with Facebook, Instacart, Seattle startup Porch, and Microsoft’s AI platform, and apply them to a world she hasn’t played in before.

And get this: it’s one of her favorite books.

Speaking last fall on Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast, Sharma mentioned she had read the novel every year for the past three years. “I love it so much,” she said, calling it a “beautiful story.”

She didn’t mention on the podcast speed round that it’s a story about video games. It wasn’t really relevant at the time. But it is now, given the news Friday that Sharma will succeed 38-year Microsoft veteran Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming, in a shakeup that also saw Xbox President Sarah Bond — previously seen as Spencer’s likely successor — decide to leave.

Sharma was a surprise pick, in part because she has no prior video-game industry leadership experience, and limited background as a gamer, which is creating skepticism in gaming circles already. However, she has experience running large tech platforms, the clear trust of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and a belief in the potential of AI to reshape every business.

On that last point, she quickly offered some reassurance to Microsoft employees and the broader universe of Xbox gamers in her introductory memo last week.

“As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop,” she wrote. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

Sharma laid out three priorities in the memo: great games above all else, a recommitment to Xbox’s core console fans, and what she called the “future of play” — new business models and a shared platform where developers and players can create together. 

She vowed not to treat the company’s iconic franchises as “static IP to milk and monetize,” and said she wants to return to “the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place.”

Her first act was promoting longtime studio chief Matt Booty to executive vice president and chief content officer, pairing her platform background with his decades of gaming credibility. 

“My first job is simple,” she wrote. “Understand what makes this work and protect it.”

The challenge ahead

There’s a lot to protect, and plenty of work to do.

Microsoft has been in gaming for decades, from early PC titles like Flight Simulator to the launch of the original Xbox console in 2001. 

Under Spencer, the company made massive bets on expansion, acquiring ZeniMax Media and its family of studios — including Bethesda — for $7.5 billion in 2021, and then closing the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023, the largest gaming deal in history. That brought Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, Diablo, and Overwatch under Microsoft’s roof, making it the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue. 

Spencer also expanded Xbox’s reach across PC, mobile, and cloud gaming, and built Game Pass into a major subscription service, transforming the division’s business model.

But the financial picture has been rough. Microsoft’s gaming revenue fell 9% in the most recent quarter, with hardware revenue down 32%. The division represents about 7% of the company’s total revenue, and has faced pressure in recent years to meet aggressive profit targets.

Xbox’s challenge has not been a lack of talent or popular franchises. GeekWire gaming contributor Thomas Wilde observed that the biggest problem has been instability: waves of layoffs and studio closures that left even successful teams uncertain about their future.

In his memo about the transition, Nadella said Sharma brings “deep experience building and growing platforms, aligning business models to long-term value, and operating at global scale.”

The implication in the selection is clear: Xbox spans console, PC, mobile, and cloud platforms, requiring an operator who knows how to make all the pieces work together. 

That’s the job Sharma has done everywhere she’s been.

From Wisconsin to Redmond

Sharma’s career and biographical details have been widely scrutinized over the past few days, as the video game and business press have scrambled to figure out who this person is, who arrived seemingly out of the blue to lead one of Microsoft’s biggest consumer brands. 

Now 37, she grew up in Wisconsin and started working at 17, with an early role at SC Johnson, according to a 2014 MarTech profile. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and by the time she left college had worked at Cargill, Deloitte, and Microsoft, and lived abroad in Hungary.

As of last fall, she was a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo, explaining to Rachitsky on his podcast that the discipline is “more mental than it is physical.”

She has been at Microsoft for two years, running the CoreAI product organization, the team behind Azure AI Studio, the company’s AI model catalog, and the developer tools for Microsoft Copilot. She was previously COO of Instacart, and before that VP of product at Meta, where she ran Messenger and Instagram Direct. She’s on the Home Depot and Coupang boards.

What’s lesser known is that she got her start at Microsoft, interning at the company and then working in marketing right out of college before leaving to help build Porch, the Seattle home services company, where she was COO during the company’s early years.

In a 2024 interview with GeekWire at Microsoft’s Build developer conference, not long after rejoining the company, Sharma talked about what brought her back. After years working across different types of organizations, she said, the lesson she drew from her career was the importance of working with great people on problems that matter. 

She described feeling fortunate to be working on “some of the most important technology of our lifetime” at a critical juncture, with people embracing a growth mindset.

Winning over the gamers

Part of what made Spencer so beloved among Xbox fans was that he was one of them — a lifelong gamer with a prolific achievement history and a habit of wearing gaming T-shirts under blazers at industry events. 

Sharma knows she can’t replicate that overnight, but she’s clearly trying to close the gap.

Over the weekend, she began engaging directly with Xbox fans on social media, sharing her gamertag (AMRAHSAHSA, her name spelled backwards) and listing her top three games as “Halo, Valheim, Goldeneye” — Microsoft’s flagship franchise, a popular survival game, and classic title that first launched on the Nintendo 64 in 1997.

When one fan accused her account of being run by AI, she replied: “Beep Boop Beep Boop.”

She’s also getting public support from inside Xbox. Longtime exec Aaron Greenberg, the division’s VP of marketing, wrote on X that after spending time with Sharma during the past week, he was “incredibly optimistic about the opportunity ahead under her leadership,” describing her as “exceptionally bright, eager to listen and learn from others, no ego.”

The activity history in Sharma’s Xbox profile, which IGN and Windows Central quickly dissected, shows she’s played about 30 titles since mid-January, gravitating toward narrative-driven indie games like Firewatch, Gone Home, and What Remains of Edith Finch — the kinds of games you’d play if you wanted to understand games as art, not just entertainment.

She unlocked her first achievement Jan. 15, about five weeks before the announcement of her new role. It was a Halo: Master Chief Collection milestone, fittingly titled “Your Journey Begins.”

In this episode of The PowerShell Podcast, Andrew Pla sits down with Pablo Correchel, an early-career IT professional who is publicly documenting his PowerShell and learning journey. Just one year into his first help desk role while studying cybersecurity, Pablo shares how consistent practice, sharing what you learn, and embracing beginner questions have accelerated his learning.

The conversation explores escaping “tutorial hell,” using AI as a learning tool instead of a shortcut, understanding objects and the pipeline, and why putting yourself out there is one of the fastest ways to grow in tech. This episode is a reminder that you don’t have to be an expert to contribute... You just have to start.

Key Takeaways:
• Learning in public accelerates growth – Sharing small wins and exercises builds confidence, invites mentorship, and creates unexpected opportunities.
• Understand the fundamentals deeply – Concepts like objects, the pipeline, Get-Help, Get-Member, and Get-Command form the foundation for long-term PowerShell success.
• Use AI strategically – Treat AI as a tutor that challenges you, not a script generator that robs you of learning.

Guest Bio:
Pablo Correchel is an IT support professional based in Florida and a cybersecurity student at St. Petersburg College. With interests spanning cybersecurity, coding, cloud, and Windows environments, Pablo represents the next generation of IT professionals building skills through curiosity, consistency, and community.

Resource Links:
• Pablo Correchel on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablocorrechel
• Connect with Andrew - https://andrewpla.tech/links
• PDQ Discord – https://discord.gg/PDQ
• Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches – https://www.manning.com/series/learn-powershell-in-a-month-of-lunches
• PowerShell Wednesdays – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdV6Qecn9v0&list=PL1mL90yFExsix-L0havb8SbZXoYRPol0B
• The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube – https://youtu.be/JXgEwLfvwkk

---

Guests:

• Alexander  Pabst, Global Deputy CISO, Allianz SE
• Michael Sinno, Director of D&R, Google

Topics:

• We've spent decades obsessed with MTTD (Mean Time to Detect) and MTTR (Mean Time to Respond). As AI agents begin to handle the bulk of triage at machine speed, do these metrics become "vanity metrics"? If an AI resolves an alert in seconds, does measuring the "mean" still tell us anything about the health of our security program, or should we be looking at "Time to Context" instead?
• You mentioned the Maturity Triangle. Can you walk us through that framework? Specifically, how does AI change the balance between the three points of that triangle—is it shifting us from a "People-heavy" model to something more "Engineering-led," and where does the "Measurement" piece sit?
• Google is famous for its "Engineering-led" approach to D&R. How is Google currently measuring the success of its own internal D&R program? Specifically, how are you quantifying "Toil Reduction"? Are we measuring how many hours we saved, or are we measuring the complexity of the threats our humans are now free to hunt?
• Toil reduction is a laudable goal for the team members, what are the metrics we track and report up to document the overall improvement in D&R for Google's board?
• When you talk to your board about the success of AI in your security program, what are the 2 or 3 "Golden Metrics" that actually move the needle for them? How do you prove that an AI-driven SOC is actually better, not just faster?
• We often talk about AI as an "assistant," but we're moving toward Agentic SOCs. How should organizations measure the "unit economics" of their SOC? Should we be tracking the ratio of AI-handled vs. Human-handled incidents, and at what point does a high AI-handle rate become a risk rather than a success?

Resources:

• Video version
• EP252 The Agentic SOC Reality: Governing AI Agents, Data Fidelity, and Measuring Success
• EP238 Google Lessons for Using AI Agents for Securing Our Enterprise
• EP91 "Hacking Google", Op Aurora and Insider Threat at Google
• EP236 Accelerated SIEM Journey: A SOC Leader's Playbook for Modernization and AI
• EP189 How Google Does Security Programs at Scale: CISO Insights
• EP75 How We Scale Detection and Response at Google: Automation, Metrics, Toil
• The SOC Metrics that Matter…or Do They? blog
• An Actual Complete List Of SOC Metrics (And Your Path To DIY) blog
• Achieving Autonomic Security Operations: Why metrics matter (but not how you think) blog

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/cloudsecuritypodcast/EP264_not263_CloudSecPodcast.mp3?dest-id=2641814