AWS to Offer University Students One Year of Free Access to AI Development Tool Kiro

[Financial News] Amazon Web Services (AWS) is expanding Kiro for Students worldwide, allowing university students to use its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered development tool Kiro free of charge for one year. The program is designed to foster talented AI professionals by enabling students to learn through hands-on use of professional development tools and develop their ideas while attending university.
According to industry sources on the 10th, Kiro for Students is a program that helps university students turn ideas into real-world projects using an AI-powered development tool and gain experience with AI-agent-based development. AWS first introduced Kiro for Students in March at 11 universities in two countries. It is now expanding the program to 121 additional universities in 16 countries.
The program now covers a total of 132 universities in 18 countries. In South Korea, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Kookmin University have newly been selected to participate. All enrolled students can use the Kiro Pro plan free of charge for 12 months. Kiro Pro is a paid plan that provides 1,000 credits per month, representing benefits worth $240 annually.
Students can create a Kiro account using their university email address or link that address to an existing account. They then check their eligibility on the account page and complete verification through SheerID, a student verification service. Once verified, they can develop academic and personal projects in various environments, including the Kiro integrated development environment (IDE), command-line interface (CLI), Kiro Web, and Kiro Crew.
In the Kiro integrated development environment, students can use spec-driven development to clarify what they want to build and turn it into clear requirements, a design, and a sequential task list before beginning development. They can use this approach to build tools for managing study-group schedules by checking multiple people's availability, flashcard apps that convert lecture notes into quizzes, and projects that bring startup ideas to life. When working on multiple projects simultaneously, Agent Focus allows tasks to run in parallel, with the results of each task reviewed in one place.
The Kiro command-line interface supports scripting and automation with agentic capabilities in a command-line environment. Students can use it to automatically organize lecture recordings, back up projects to GitHub every night, convert syllabi into calendar events, or run tests before committing changes. It can also be used via SSH on university lab computers or remote clusters.
Kiro Web runs in a browser without requiring separate software installation. Students can start projects on computers in school labs, borrowed laptops, or Chromebooks. Potential uses include developing landing pages for student clubs, browser games for hackathons, and prototypes of startup ideas to show co-founders.
Through the open-source Kiro Crew, students can configure tools and agents to suit their own workflows. They can run tasks in the background, such as sending a reminder every morning about unanswered emails or retrieving the latest project changes before class. For hackathons, the system can also be configured to develop multiple features in parallel.
[email protected] Min-kwon Jang Reporter