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AWS AI Business Strategist (AIB-C01)

Prove you can turn AI into business outcomes, without writing code

Exam Quick Facts

Exam Code

AIB-C01

Questions

Duration

170 minutes (beta)

Passing Score

700/1000 (~70%)

Cost

$50 USD (beta); $100 USD standard

Valid For

3 years

Exam Version Since

2026 (beta)

Difficulty

Beginner

Free cheat sheet14 pages · PDF

AWS AI Business Strategist Cheat Sheet (AIB-C01)

AI literacy, use-case prioritisation, build-buy-partner, KPIs and ROI, AI pricing models, responsible AI, governance, readiness and scaling from pilot to enterprise for the AIB-C01 beta exam

Certification Overview

The AWS Certified AI Business Strategist (AIB-C01) is the first exam in AWS's new Business certification category, which sits alongside Foundational, Associate, Professional and Specialty. In AWS's words, it "validates a business professional's ability to translate AI capabilities into business outcomes, establish responsible AI practices, evaluate opportunities to optimize AI solutions, and drive AI adoption at scale." The exam prioritizes strategic decision-making over technical implementation.

The exam is in beta right now. Beta registration opened on September 1, 2026, and beta exams have been delivered since September 29, 2026. The beta has 85 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions and lasts 170 minutes. It costs $50 USD; the standard exam price is $100 USD. You can take it at a Pearson testing center or online proctored, in English or Japanese during the beta, with more languages at general availability. AWS has not published a beta end date or a GA date.

There is a bonus for going early: earn the certification by February 15, 2027 and you receive an additional Early Adopter digital badge alongside the credential badge. Passing the beta earns the full certification, which stays active for three years.

Who Should Take This Exam?

AWS describes the target candidate as "a business professional who evaluates, champions, or scales AI initiatives in their organization or for their clients" and who "works alongside technical teams but does not build AI solutions themselves." Typical roles are product and program managers, sales and business development professionals, line-of-business leaders, consultants, business analysts, and marketers.

There are no prerequisites: no coding, no AWS implementation experience and no other AWS certification. AWS recommends about six months of experience working with or alongside teams adopting AI. You should recognize common categories of AI tools, such as recommendation engines, natural language processing, computer vision, document extraction and AI for customer operations, without needing to configure or build them.

Exam Domains

AI Fundamentals and Literacy

24%

Core AI concepts in business contexts: the differences between AI, ML and generative AI, structured vs. unstructured data and why data quality matters, rule-based automation vs. AI, what AI agents are, model drift and ongoing monitoring, shadow AI, prompt engineering basics, token and context window limits, RAG vs. fine-tuning, and global frameworks such as ISO/IEC 23053 and ISO/IEC 42001.

AI Strategy and Business Value Creation

28%

The largest domain. Identifying high-impact use cases, build-buy-partner decisions, prioritizing initiatives (scale, pause or terminate), recognizing when AI is not the right answer, defining KPIs and baseline metrics, calculating AI ROI, leading indicators of success, cost planning and controls, and positioning AI for competitive advantage.

AI Governance and Responsible AI Leadership

24%

Applying responsible AI dimensions (fairness, explainability, privacy, safety, transparency, robustness) to business decisions and tradeoffs, governance by design, human oversight and guardrails, cross-functional governance structures, regulatory compliance, risk classification, bias across the AI lifecycle, harmful content and IP risks, and hallucinations and other reliability risks.

Business Readiness, Leadership, and AI Transformation

24%

Assessing AI readiness and maturity across people, process, technology and governance, data readiness and data silos, executive sponsorship and AI champions, change management and workforce communication, building AI literacy, and scaling from pilot to enterprise through phases such as envision, experiment, launch and scale, supported by AI centers of excellence.

Ready to test your AIB-C01 knowledge?

Practice with our free AI Business Strategist (AIB-C01) exam — 65 questions with detailed explanations. No signup required.

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Study Strategy

Start with the official exam guide and AWS Skill Builder. AWS offers an Exam Prep Plan, an Official Practice Question Set, digital courses for the AI Business Strategist role (13 modules mapped to the four domains), walk-through questions and a Meeting Simulator. The Official Practice Exam is not available during the beta. AWS describes the exam as testing "portable business judgment through enterprise-based scenarios": AWS services appear as context, but they are not what is being tested.

Spend the most time on AI Strategy and Business Value Creation (28%). Practice reasoning through scenarios such as a vendor proposing an AI deployment: is the investment sound, premature, or missing critical success factors? Be comfortable with KPIs, baselines, ROI, build-buy-partner tradeoffs and when not to use AI. The other three domains are 24% each, so do not skip governance, responsible AI or change management.

Learn the in-scope AWS offerings at a business level only: what Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker AI and Amazon Quick are for, how the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework structures AI adoption, the shared responsibility model for AI workloads, and how AI pricing works (consumption-, instance- and seat-based, Savings Plans, Pricing Calculator, Cost Explorer, Marketplace). Then use our free practice exam to find weak domains. If you already work alongside AI teams, 2-4 weeks of focused study is a reasonable plan.

Key AWS Services to Know

Amazon Bedrock — generative AI platform: pricing tiers, Guardrails, Knowledge Bases (strategic level)
Amazon SageMaker AI — custom ML, and when to choose managed vs. custom solutions
Amazon Quick — AI-powered business assistants
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) — planning and scaling AI across an organization
AWS shared responsibility model — data security and compliance for AI workloads at a governance level
AWS Well-Architected Framework, Responsible AI Lens — governance best practices
AWS AI pricing structures — consumption-based, instance-based and seat-based
Savings Plans — cost optimization
AWS Pricing Calculator and AWS Cost Explorer — cost planning
AWS Marketplace — evaluating build-buy-partner options

Career Impact

Most AI certifications prove you can build AI. This one proves you can decide where AI is worth building, make the business case, govern the risk and lead adoption from pilot to production. That makes it relevant to product and program managers, consultants, sales and business development, business analysts, marketers and line-of-business leaders who are already being asked to own AI initiatives.

It also pairs well with the AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01). AWS's own summary: "AI Practitioner certification validates technical understanding. AI Business Strategist certification validates business judgment. Transformation requires both." If you want to go deeper on the technology afterwards, AWS suggests the AI Practitioner, then the Machine Learning Engineer Associate or Generative AI Developer Professional.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is the AI Business Strategist different from the AI Practitioner (AIF-C01)?

The AI Practitioner validates foundational knowledge of AI, ML and generative AI concepts and AWS AI services. The AI Business Strategist validates business judgment: which AI investments to pursue, how to build the business case, how to govern risk and how to drive adoption from pilot to production. AWS says it does not assess knowledge of AWS AI services. Neither exam is a prerequisite for the other, and you can earn both.

Is the AIB-C01 exam still in beta?

Yes, as of October 2026. Beta registration opened September 1, 2026 and beta delivery began September 29, 2026. The beta has 85 questions, lasts 170 minutes and costs $50 USD (the standard price is $100 USD). AWS has not published a beta end date or a general availability date. Beta results can take up to 5 business days, and you can take the beta only once.

What is the AWS AI Business Strategist Early Adopter badge?

If you earn the AI Business Strategist certification by February 15, 2027, AWS gives you an additional Early Adopter digital badge on top of the regular credential badge.

Do I need coding or AWS experience for the AI Business Strategist exam?

No. AWS states that no coding, AWS implementation experience or other AWS certifications are required. About six months of experience working with or alongside AI initiatives is recommended. Out of scope are tasks like building models, data engineering, configuring AWS services and running AI systems in production.

What is the passing score for AIB-C01?

Results are pass/fail on a scaled score from 100 to 1,000, and the minimum passing score is 700. AWS uses a compensatory scoring model, so you do not need to pass each domain separately. Unanswered questions count as incorrect and there is no penalty for guessing, so answer every question.