Building with Open-Weight Models on AWS: Insights from the London 2026 Event

On May 13th, 2026, AWS hosted a full-day technical event in London focused on a question that’s increasingly central to enterprise AI strategy: are you using open-weight models to their full potential? The event brought together AWS engineers, leading model providers like MiniMax and Z.ai , and enterprise practitioners to explore what it really takes to deploy open-weight foundation models in production. As the open-weight model ecosystem matures at unprecedented speed, organizations face a critical inflection point: the choice between proprietary and open-weight models is no longer just about