Amazon Web Services announced its AI & ML Scholars program will sponsor 100,000 learners globally in 2026, addressing the severe AI talent shortage.

The two-phase program runs from March 24 through June 24 (Challenge phase), with the top 4,500 advancing to fully-funded Udacity Nanodegrees in three tracks: AI Programmer, Agentic AI Business Professional, and Agent Developer.

AI talent demand exceeds supply by 3.2:1 globally. In 2025, the program reached 50,000+ learners across 170 countries.

By training 100,000 developers on AWS tools, AWS increases the talent pool skilled in its services--education as competitive moat.

“The AI talent gap is also a diversity gap. We intend to close both.”
— Matt Garman, CEO, AWS
100K
Target learners
$50M
Investment
2028
Target year