Classmethod Signs Five-Year Collaboration with AWS to Help Japanese Enterprises Adapt to the AI Era, Built on Its Own Transformation

Expanded Strategic Collaboration Agreement scales Classmethod’s “Client Zero” model, turning the firm’s internal AI transformation into a proven path customers can follow, from modernizing legacy systems and strengthening security to the emerging frontier of Physical AI

TOKYO — Oct. 28, 2026 — Classmethod, Inc. (Classmethod), an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Tier Services Partner in Japan, today announced a new five-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with AWS to help Japanese enterprises guard against new threats and capture new opportunities as AI becomes part of everyday business. The agreement is designed for organizations in industries such as manufacturing, retail, and financial services, where running AI in production requires the security, governance, and reliability to support core business processes, often alongside modernizing the legacy applications and data AI depends on and supporting ongoing operations after deployment.

Under the SCA, Classmethod will pair AWS technologies with its own implementation experience, grounded in a method it has already applied to itself: its “Client Zero” model, under which Classmethod adopts each new AWS capability inside its own business first, then turns what it proves into a repeatable offering for customers. Classmethod reports that this approach has reshaped its own operations, including measurable gains in software development productivity, giving it firsthand experience of the transformation it now delivers to customers.

“Many companies have already adopted AI, but a gap is opening between those that use it to save individual employees time and those that use it across the organization to achieve significant results. Closing that gap means going beyond isolated efficiency gains to strengthen data foundations, rethink business processes, and optimize the whole business, starting from its core systems. Through this collaboration, we will support customers at every stage, from modernizing legacy systems to running AI in production and beyond. As our own Client Zero, we will adopt new technologies first and share what we learn, successes and failures alike, working with AWS for the long term to support the sustainable growth of companies across Japan.” — Satoshi Yokota, President and CEO, Classmethod

“The most impactful partners aren’t just telling their customers how to transform with AI, they’re doing it themselves. AWS and Classmethod are proving that model: Classmethod transforms its own business first, then turns what it learns into production outcomes for customers, extending all the way to Physical AI. That’s how AI moves from promise to impact.” — Ruba Borno, VP, Specialists and Partners, AWS

Helping Enterprises Adapt to the AI Era

Under the SCA, Classmethod will deliver production-focused AI solutions and capabilities across five areas:

Modernizing legacy systems and strengthening security. As AI adoption accelerates, unmaintained legacy and self-hosted systems face new security threats. Classmethod will combine AWS Transform with its migration expertise to modernize legacy applications, databases, and data platforms. AWS Security Hub and Amazon GuardDuty will support continuous security and monitoring, and AWS Security Agent will provide ongoing security reviews and penetration testing of applications, so customers can scale AI without separating innovation from security, reliability, and governance.
Managed operations. Classmethod will then use Amazon Bedrock and AWS DevOps Agent to automate routine operations such as incident investigation, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis.
Production AI for key industries. Classmethod will develop and deploy AI solutions for manufacturing, retail, and financial services, built on AWS services including Amazon Bedrock, with agentic capabilities where processes call for autonomous action, and carry them from use-case identification through production deployment. For manufacturers, the first solution connects factory-floor data collection and visualization, AI-driven predictive maintenance, and generative AI that captures and transfers the know-how of experienced workers. Solutions for retail and financial services will follow, with a target of 30 customers in production in the first year.
A proven path through the “Client Zero” model. Classmethod adopts each new AWS capability inside its own business first, codifies the patterns and governance lessons that result, and turns them into repeatable offerings. Customers adopt an approach Classmethod has already run in production rather than a first attempt.
AI Experience Center. A new AI Experience Center will help customers design, prototype, and validate AI use cases and carry them through to production architecture, governance, security, and operations. The center is targeted to launch on November 2, 2026.

Extending AI into the Physical World

The collaboration also extends AI beyond knowledge work and into physical operations, where models perceive their surroundings, reason over what they sense, and act on the robots, equipment, and operational data that run factories, warehouses, and critical infrastructure. This is among the most forward-looking elements of the agreement, and work is already underway.

Classmethod has already begun Physical AI research with a disaster-prevention company, exploring how AI-equipped robots can operate autonomously in high-stakes environments, including experiments in which robots link to fire-protection systems to suppress fires and conduct search-and-rescue trials inside a real building. Building on this work, Classmethod will expand its Physical AI practice, drawing on AWS capabilities for developing and operating autonomous robots: simulation-based training, model training and refinement in Amazon SageMaker AI, and edge deployment through AWS IoT Greengrass that runs real-time inference while feeding sensor data back to improve the models over time. The result is AI that does not just analyze operations but senses, decides, and acts within them, so physical processes can be automated and optimized rather than only monitored. This focus is especially salient for Japan’s large manufacturing and logistics sectors, where AI-equipped autonomous systems can translate directly into operational productivity.

Scaling What Classmethod and AWS Have Built Together

Classmethod and AWS have collaborated since 2011, a relationship through which Classmethod has supported more than 5,600 companies and helped build and manage more than 40,000 AWS accounts. This new agreement is designed to scale that track record on two fronts: accelerating Classmethod’s own transformation into an AI-first business, and extending the results that transformation produces to customers.

Classmethod runs its own operations on AWS, including Amazon Bedrock, Kiro, and Amazon Quick, and reports that AI-driven development has increased its coding productivity fivefold and overall project productivity twofold by internal measures. The same capabilities Classmethod proves internally become the offerings it brings to customers, so each advance in its own business compounds into faster, more reliable production outcomes for the enterprises it serves.

Customers are already seeing those results.

“The pharmaceutical industry faces the challenge of pursuing two seemingly conflicting imperatives at once: complying with stringent regulations while accelerating the adoption of AI. We place great trust in Classmethod as a partner in tackling this challenge, combining deep expertise in the latest AWS and AI technologies with a flexible, hands-on support style unbound by convention. We have high expectations that the further strengthening of Classmethod’s collaboration with AWS will elevate both the quality and speed of its technical support.” — Yoshitake Kitanishi, Ph.D., Associate Corporate Officer, Vice President, Data Science Department, DX Promotion Division, Shionogi & Co., Ltd.

“We would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to Classmethod on the signing of a new Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS and the announcement of its ‘Client Zero’ strategy. Through our long-standing business relationship, we have worked alongside Classmethod in supporting its efforts to achieve continued business growth. In one of our divisions, an AI analytics application built on AWS with Classmethod’s support has become established in daily operations and is actively used. The ability to move AI beyond proof of concept and into everyday practical use speaks both to the value of AWS as a cloud foundation and to the importance of the technical support that makes it possible. We believe that the ‘Client Zero’ concept, which emphasizes serving as an active practitioner of the latest technologies and applying the knowledge gained to create value for customers, is a meaningful approach in the era of generative AI. We hope that this collaboration will further accelerate the adoption of AI and cloud technologies across a diverse range of companies, contributing to the creation of new value and sustainable growth.” — Takao Ueji, Executive Officer, MUFG Bank, Ltd.

“I would like to offer my sincere congratulations to Classmethod, Inc. and AWS on the execution of their new Strategic Collaboration Agreement.
Since founding our joint venture, Nextmode, in 2020, NTT EAST and Classmethod have worked side by side to assist regional small and mid-sized businesses in adopting cloud technologies. Advanced technologies, particularly generative AI, are now transitioning from tools for select industry leaders into essential infrastructure that enhances regional competitiveness and addresses societal challenges.
Classmethod’s ‘Client Zero’ initiative—an approach where they act as their own first client to deliver highly practical and reliable insights—shares a deep synergy with our vision for regional digital transformation.
Through this collaboration, we anticipate that AWS’s advanced technological capabilities and Classmethod’s hands-on expertise will come together to significantly accelerate AI and cloud utilization for enterprises nationwide.” — Naoki Shibutani, Representative Member of the Board, President and CEO, NTT EAST, Inc.

“We are delighted that Classmethod, Inc. and AWS have renewed their strategic collaboration agreement. AWS is Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, and Amazon Bedrock is an important channel for bringing Claude to enterprise customers. By supporting the implementation of Claude on Amazon Bedrock and helping customers build in-house capability, Classmethod has enabled many Japanese companies to put generative AI into production and drive sustained adoption. As agentic AI moves from proof of concept into real business deployment, we look forward to seeing Classmethod, with its deep expertise across both cloud and AI, lead the way in safe, trustworthy enterprise AI adoption in Japan.” — Hidetoshi Tojo, Executive Officer, Anthropic Japan

About Classmethod, Inc.

Classmethod, Inc. is a technology partner supporting corporate digital transformation, centered on cloud-native technologies including Amazon Web Services (AWS), data analytics, mobile, IoT, and AI/machine learning.

Classmethod has held AWS’s top partner tier every year since 2015 and has received the AWS Consulting Partner of the Year award in Japan five times. In 2022, the company received the SI Partner of the Year – Global award, and in 2023 was a finalist in the same global category while also receiving the SI Partner of the Year – APJ award. As one of the top AWS partners worldwide, Classmethod has supported more than 5,600 companies and has helped manage and build more than 40,000 AWS accounts to date.

The company also maintains a strong culture of technical writing among its engineers, publishing more than 60,000 articles on its technical media platform, DevelopersIO, and operates Zenn, a knowledge-sharing platform for engineers, contributing to the wider technical community. Guided by its mission to keep contributing to the creative activities of all people, Classmethod proposes the technology best suited to growing each customer’s business value.

Headquarters: Hibiya Fort Tower 26F, 1-1-1 Nishi-Shimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo
President and CEO: Satoshi Yokota
Business: Cloud adoption support, data infrastructure construction, system development, generative AI adoption support.

• Official website: https://classmethod.jp/
• Technical blog “DevelopersIO”: https://dev.classmethod.jp/
• Technical community “Zenn”: https://zenn.dev/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/classmethod/
• Official YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/classmethod-yt/

*The names of companies and products mentioned in this document are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.
*The figures stated in this release are based on information available as of the date of announcement.