Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloud computing platform that demonstrates adaptive radiation through service proliferation. Beginning with the 2002 API Mandate requiring all teams to expose functionality through service interfaces, Amazon created the modularity that enabled radiation into 200+ cloud services by 2023, generating $90.7 billion in annual revenue.

AWS began as two generalist services (S3 storage, EC2 compute) in 2006 and radiated rapidly into specialized niches: databases (RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora), machine learning (SageMaker), serverless (Lambda), and dozens more. The 2002 mandate forced Amazon to design systems as if they'd be external services - when opportunity arose, those services were ready to launch.