Amazon is accelerating its artificial intelligence development by recruiting top talent from AI agent startup Adept and licensing the company’s technology. Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s senior vice president and head scientist of the artificial general intelligence (AGI) unit, announced in a memo that Adept’s co-founder and CEO, David Luan, along with several other talented team members, will join Amazon’s AGI team.
Luan will head the “AGI Autonomy” division, reporting directly to Prasad. This move comes as Amazon faces intense competition in AI from Microsoft and Google, both of which are rapidly integrating AI features into their core products and offering advanced language models through their cloud services. Amazon’s AI services, while extensive, are often seen as lagging behind these top competitors.
Amazon has invested billions in OpenAI rival Anthropic and plans to enhance its Alexa voice assistant with a new generative AI-powered version. Prasad, previously the head scientist for Alexa, has been leading Amazon’s AGI development efforts since August.
In a strategic leadership change, Amazon recently announced that Matt Garman, previously head of sales and marketing at Amazon Web Services (AWS), will succeed Adam Selipsky as AWS head. This change underscores the increasing importance of AI in Amazon’s business strategy.
The hiring of Luan and his team, coupled with the licensing of Adept’s technology, is a significant boost for Amazon. Adept, founded in 2022 by former engineers from OpenAI and Google, has quickly become a prominent player in the AI agents space, with backing from Microsoft and Nvidia. The startup has been valued at over $1 billion.
Adept specializes in developing AI agents capable of performing complex tasks independently, such as navigating web pages and logging data. Amazon’s licensing agreement will allow it to use Adept’s technology, multimodal models, and datasets, which Prasad noted will expedite Amazon’s roadmap for creating digital agents that automate software workflows.
Adept confirmed the deal in a blog post, stating that the partnership with Amazon will enable it to focus on building AI agents without the extensive capital requirements of developing its own models. Despite the leadership changes, Adept will continue to operate as a standalone company.
This strategic move aligns with Amazon’s vision to provide practical AI solutions for both consumer and enterprise customers, leveraging the expertise and advanced technologies brought in by Luan and his team.
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