GlossaryHardwareNew to AI

S3

Also written: Simple Storage Service

Amazon S3 is cloud object storage. It stores and retrieves data from anywhere on the web.

In plain terms

Amazon S3, which stands for Simple Storage Service, is a popular cloud storage service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Think of it like an infinitely large hard drive in the sky. You can store any kind of digital file there, like documents, images, videos, or even backups of your computer. Other applications and services can then access this data over the internet when they need it. For example, a website might use S3 to store all its images so they can be displayed to visitors.

The expert version

Amazon S3 is an object storage service designed for scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It allows users to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time from anywhere on the web. Data is stored as objects in buckets, which are flat namespaces. S3 offers various storage classes optimized for different access patterns and costs, such as S3 Standard for frequently accessed data and S3 Glacier for long-term archival.

In the context of AI labs, S3 is frequently used for storing large datasets for training models, model checkpoints, and serving inference results. Its durability and availability make it a reliable backend for the massive data pipelines required by frontier AI development.

Why it matters now

Amazon S3 is a common cloud storage service used by many AI labs. The recent mentions highlight its use in storing data for AI model training and examples, such as video analysis code and research papers.

Where it shows up 2 items, newest first
How each company uses it
Anthropic Claude
Anthropic uses cloud storage services like S3 to host research and data related to its AI models.
Google Gemini
Google Gemini's example code relies on cloud storage services like S3 for hosting data, such as videos used in demonstrations.
Related terms

cloud computingobject storagedata lakesAWSAzure Blob StorageGoogle Cloud Storage

Often confused with
SATA
A type of serial interface used for connecting storage devices like hard d
SSD
Solid State Drive, a physical storage device using flash memory, distinct f
Database
A structured collection of data, often used for transactional data, un
Origin

Amazon S3 was announced by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in March 2006. It was one of the earliest and most influential cloud storage services, pioneering the concept of scalable, pay-as-you-go object storage. Source ↗

Try this about 5 minutes

You can explore Amazon S3 by visiting the AWS Management Console. After signing up for a free tier account, you can create a bucket, upload a file, and then make it publicly accessible to see how data can be stored and retrieved from the cloud.

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The Playbook: reusable how-tos, prompts, configs and tips pulled out of the news.

Questions people ask

What is a bucket in S3?
A bucket is a container for objects stored in Amazon S3. You must create a bucket before you can upload data to S3.
How much does S3 cost?
S3 pricing is based on usage, including the amount of data stored, the number of requests made, and data transfer costs. AWS offers a free tier for new users.

First seen on Subvolts Apr 8, 2026. Updated Oct 14, 2026. Written by an AI model from the items above and reviewed against them weekly; report an error.