McKinsey and Amazon Web Services have launched the Amazon McKinsey Group (AMG), a joint operating model that combines McKinsey’s strategy and “end-to-end transformation” work with AWS cloud and AI services.

McKinsey said AMG’s commercial model is “tied directly to outcomes,” and that it is targeting transformations with $1 billion or more in client impact.

The new collaboration aims to help organizations that recognize the importance of AI, cloud and automation, but are struggling to “translate strategic ambition into execution and sustained results.”

AMG, McKinsey said, is meant to bridge that gap by putting strategy, technology, and implementation into one integrated team.

What AMG is selling: one team, one plan, one delivery path

McKinsey said AMG teams will work “from defining the vision to full-scale implementation,” with McKinsey and AWS “work[ing] as one” to reduce the handoffs that can slow delivery or dilute results.

Becca Coggins, McKinsey senior partner and global leader of capabilities, said AI-driven transformation requires business leadership paired with infrastructure and AI capabilities “to operationalize at scale,” and positioned AMG as a way to combine strategy, change management, and AWS services “from the start to capture value.”

AWS emphasized the same “from pilots to scale” message.

Ruba Borno, AWS vice president of global specialists and partners, said enterprise AI transformation spans model selection and organizational change, and argued that integrated technical depth plus business expertise can accelerate “time to value,” moving from pilots to enterprise-scale transformation faster.

McKinsey also highlighted AWS capabilities it expects AMG to draw on, including what it called secure global cloud infrastructure, broad AI model choice for “price-performance optimization,” and tools to deploy AI agents at enterprise scale.

A proof point McKinsey chose: supply chain, measured outcomes

To illustrate the kind of work AMG is targeting, McKinsey cited an engagement with a “major automaker,” where joint teams built an AI-enabled supply chain operating system connecting planning, manufacturing, and sales through a single orchestration layer. McKinsey said the program achieved 85% forecast accuracy at the vehicle-specification level, reduced inventory by 60%, and improved customer satisfaction by 15%.

McKinsey said the automaker embedded AI-driven demand forecasting, digital twins, and real-time supplier collaboration, and described the outcome as redefining the supply chain “from a cost center into a growth engine.”

Why the “$1B+ outcome” model matters to US enterprise buyers

AMG’s headline promise is not a new cloud service. It is a different accountability posture. McKinsey is explicitly tying fees to outcomes while aiming at billion-dollar impact. McKinsey did not disclose validation mechanics, contract terms, or revenue-share structure with AWS in the launch post.

At the same time, AMG’s “single team” structure can change program risk in both directions. It reduces coordination burden between separate strategy and implementation vendors, because McKinsey says delivery is integrated from vision through implementation.

But it also concentrates more of the transformation stack, strategy, operating model change, cloud services, and AI tooling, inside one coupled delivery motion, which can matter for buyers trying to preserve multi-vendor leverage.

This is a formal step-up from an existing McKinsey–AWS alliance

McKinsey positioned AMG as an extension of a relationship that predates the Jan. 22 launch.

In a Sept. 27, 2022 post about expanding its collaboration with AWS, McKinsey said the relationship had already delivered impact in “nearly 100 client engagements,” and described joint work spanning advanced analytics, IoT, and automation, plus efforts to reduce legacy IT costs and risk.

That same 2022 post also described examples of prior joint work, including helping a pharmaceutical company enable remote triage through a virtual agent expected to handle “more than one million calls annually,” and helping an automotive manufacturer consolidate real-time data from 30,000 supply-chain locations, with “$1 billion in anticipated supply-chain savings.”

Competitive context: “integrated AWS teams” are not new

AMG enters a market where large consulting and systems integration firms already run dedicated AWS-aligned practices.

Accenture markets an “Accenture AWS Business Group” aimed at accelerating end-to-end AWS adoption and enterprise transformation. Deloitte promotes its AWS alliance as a cloud relationship designed to guide cloud migration and deliver industry solutions.

McKinsey’s differentiator, based on its own launch language, is the combination of (1) a named joint group, (2) an “end-to-end” integrated delivery model, and (3) a stated intent to tie commercial terms directly to outcomes while targeting $1B+ impact.