Few relationships in the Formula 1 paddock run deeper than the one between AWS and Salesforce.
F1’s technology partners increasingly work as an ecosystem, each occupying a distinct layer rather than competing for the same territory.
AWS has been F1’s Official Cloud and AI Partner since 2018, embedding itself in the sport’s broadcast and engineering infrastructure years before most of today’s technology partners arrived.
Salesforce joined as a Global Partner in April 2022 under a five-year deal reported at around $30 million annually, initially focused on fan engagement and sustainability reporting through its Customer 360 platform.
That partnership was extended in March 2026 alongside the launch of an Agentforce-powered fan companion built for F1.com.
The two companies did not arrive in F1 as a package. What they brought with them, however, was a working relationship already six years old by the time Salesforce signed.
“AWS and Salesforce are not just sponsors. We have built a unified technical foundation together for F1,” Michael Aghataher, Head of Motorsports at AWS, told Sector.
“Most technology partners in F1 operate independently. They have their own hospitality suites, their own activations, their own customer programmes.
“What we’ve built is different because it reflects how our collaboration works in production.”
Crunching the numbers
That foundation splits cleanly along the two jobs a race weekend’s data actually has to do.
The first is what fans see on screen – AWS processes 1.1 million telemetry data points per second from 300 sensors fitted to each car, turning raw numbers into the real-time insights broadcasters lean on – Tyre Performance, Pit Strategy, Battle Forecast – reaching fans through more than 65 broadcasters globally.
The second job is harder, and until recently, considerably slower.
That same data also has to fuel how F1 builds relationships with its fans between races, not just during them. Aghataher explained why the two sides of that equation had, until recently, been so mismatched.
“That side is solved. Sub-second latency, global scale, proven across 24 race weekends a year,” Aghataher said.
“What wasn’t solved was the fan relationship side. Before the integration, F1’s previous data solution took 24 to 48 hours to stitch fan data together.
“By the time it was ready for activation, it was already outdated. For fans, that meant receiving generic race recaps the morning after, rather than personalised content that reflected what they actually cared about.”
The Fan Personalisation Programme closed that gap, allowing F1 to personalise every fan touchpoint, from dynamically generated email subject lines to newsletters tailored to individual preferences.
Neither layer delivers the fan outcome alone. Without AWS, there is no real-time intelligence. Without Salesforce, that intelligence never reaches the fan.
Michael Aghataher
That shift shows up directly in the numbers as F1 has recorded a 22 per cent increase in fan engagement, measured across push notification open rates, email click-throughs, app interactions and content consumption, when fans receive tailored content instead of generic communications.
“So when Salesforce’s Agentforce sends personalised push notifications, the intelligence behind what to send to whom, and when, is being driven by machine learning models running on AWS,” Aghataher explained.
“Neither layer delivers the fan outcome alone. Without AWS, there is no real-time intelligence. Without Salesforce, that intelligence never reaches the fan.”
Two logos, one goal
Today the AWS-Salesforce relationship spans co-engineering and joint go-to-market work well beyond F1.
Salesforce has crossed $5 billion in lifetime sales through AWS Marketplace alone and both companies became F1 technology partners separately, and initially for different reasons.
But Aghataher said the Fan Personalisation Programme itself was designed jointly from the outset.
“AWS providing the data lake, machine learning infrastructure and compute, and Salesforce is providing the delivery layer on top of it. This isn’t a coincidence of two logos appearing at the same race,” Aghataher said.
“The three organisations actively coordinate on technology roadmaps, joint customer programmes, and how we collectively tell the story of what modern fan engagement looks like when cloud infrastructure and CRM operate together at this scale.”
Showcase to sandbox
F1’s value to AWS was never purely about visibility, according to Aghataher, though it started that way.
Asked whether the sport functions primarily as a marketing showcase or a genuine testing ground for new technology, he argued it does not have to be mutually exclusive.
“It is both, and increasingly the latter,” he said.
“The challenges of live motorsport – the latency requirements, the global distribution, the zero tolerance for failure – create an environment that pushes our services harder than most enterprise use cases.
“What gets built and proven here informs our broader product roadmap and how we engage with customers in the media and entertainment industry and beyond.
“Track Pulse, our AI-powered broadcast intelligence tool, was built specifically for F1’s broadcast production team. It now informs how we think about real-time storytelling across other sports.”
In sync in Spain
That coordination had a visible moment earlier this year, when AWS, Salesforce and F1 brought customers from all three organisations together at the MSC Cruises Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix for a single trackside programme.
“The Barcelona activation brought attendees through that end-to-end story in a single trackside programme,” added Aghataher.
“From the real-time data infrastructure powering the race broadcast, to the personalisation platform that turns that data into meaningful fan engagement at scale, it was about bringing customers from all three organisations together to see it working was a natural extension of what already exists under the hood.
“F1 is one of the most visible proof points of what the AWS-Salesforce collaboration delivers when both platforms are architected together from the start.
“But the same pattern applies across industries where organisations need to turn large-scale data into personalised customer experiences.”
