OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Codex Become Generally Available on AWS Bedrock
On June 1, 2026, AWS and OpenAI announced that OpenAI's frontier models and its coding agent "Codex" are now generally available (GA) on Amazon Bedrock. Enterprises can use the latest models such as GPT-5.5 while keeping their existing AWS environment and governance as is.
What Happened
OpenAI and AWS are offering OpenAI's latest frontier models (including GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.4), Codex, and "Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents, powered by OpenAI" on Amazon Bedrock. These started as a limited preview on April 28, 2026, and became generally available (GA) on June 1. AWS announcement OpenAI
Via Bedrock, Codex can be integrated with the Codex CLI, the desktop app, and the Visual Studio Code extension. Usage takes place through the existing Bedrock API, and AWS's security, governance, and cost management apply as is. There is no need to build a new security model separately. AWS What's New
Billing is pay-as-you-go on a per-token basis, and usage counts toward existing AWS cloud commitments. Note that specific benchmark figures and detailed pricing were not disclosed at the time of the official announcement.
Background and Significance
Until now, enterprise use of OpenAI models was centered mainly on going through Microsoft Azure. However, the April 27, 2026, revision of the Microsoft/OpenAI agreement made deployment to other clouds possible, and the very next day, April 28, it launched immediately on AWS Bedrock. Forbes positioned this as "multi-cloud deployment after the end of the Microsoft exclusivity era."
Amazon Bedrock is a managed service that offers models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, Amazon itself, and others through a single API. With the addition of OpenAI models, enterprises can use OpenAI's cutting-edge models without additional infrastructure setup, while keeping their existing AWS environment, contracts, IAM, PrivateLink, CloudTrail, and compliance frameworks as is. The fact that usage is applied to existing AWS commitments is also significant for enterprises from a procurement standpoint. AWS announcement
Codex is OpenAI's coding agent, reportedly with over 4 million weekly users, and can be embedded directly into software engineering workflows. Managed Agents provides a production-ready agent execution environment that leverages OpenAI models. Explainer
Reactions
At the time of the April 28 announcement, posts including one by AWS CEO Matt Garman praised "Codex use at enterprise scale" and "native operation within the existing AWS stack." Specific use cases cited include handling large codebases, multi-step agent workflows, and reduced procurement friction.
During the limited preview period, some practitioners voiced complaints such as "slow responses to access requests" and "wanting to consider migrating to Bedrock due to Azure's latency issues," while others offered positive comments like "waiting for GA" and "wanting to check the behavior of persistent memory." Reactions immediately after the GA announcement were centered on dissemination by officials and related parties, and detailed user reports regarding limitations are still limited. Note that the possibility of restrictions based on region or quota is said to require confirmation.