Amazon Bedrock Enables Generative AI Inference from New Zealand Region

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has expanded its Amazon Bedrock service to the Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region (ap-southeast-6), allowing customers in New Zealand to run generative AI inference locally with access to foundation models (FMs). This launch enables users in Auckland to access models such as Anthropic Claude series and Amazon Nova 2 Lite through cross-Region inference, improving throughput and operational resilience.

Cross-Region inference is a key feature of Amazon Bedrock that routes AI inference requests from a source Region to one or more destination Regions for processing. This capability helps scale workloads by distributing traffic across multiple AWS Regions while ensuring data remains secure within the AWS network, encrypted in transit, and logged in AWS CloudTrail. There are two types of cross-Region inference profiles: geographic, which confines routing within specific regions such as Australia and New Zealand, and global, which leverages commercial AWS Regions worldwide for maximum throughput.

With the addition of Auckland as a source Region, the AU geographic routing profile now includes three Regions: Auckland (ap-southeast-6), Sydney (ap-southeast-2), and Melbourne (ap-southeast-4). Requests originating from Auckland can be processed locally or routed to Sydney or Melbourne, providing greater capacity distribution. Meanwhile, global cross-Region inference from New Zealand grants access to a broader set of foundation models across all supported commercial AWS Regions, offering enhanced throughput and automatic failover to maintain continuity during demand spikes.

Supported foundation models for cross-Region inference from New Zealand include Anthropic Claude Opus 4.5, 4.6, Sonnet 4.5, 4.6, Haiku 4.5, and Amazon Nova 2 Lite. Users select geographic or global inference profiles by prefixing model IDs accordingly (e.g., au.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-6 for geographic). This setup addresses data residency requirements for organizations in Australia and New Zealand while providing flexible options for workloads without strict residency constraints.

This expansion of Amazon Bedrock enhances AI capabilities for New Zealand businesses by combining local access with scalable, secure inference processing across multiple AWS Regions. For detailed model availability, permissions, and configuration guidance, users are encouraged to consult AWS documentation on supported Regions and cross-Region inference profiles.

Read more: aws.amazon.com