Amazon is intensifying its artificial intelligence development efforts, enlisting key talent from AI startup Adept and securing licenses for its technology.
Rohit Prasad, a senior vice president and head scientist overseeing Amazon’s artificial general intelligence (AGI) unit, informed employees in a memo on Friday that the company has brought on board David Luan, co-founder and CEO of Adept, along with “a few other highly skilled team members” for their AGI team.
Luan will lead Amazon’s “AGI Autonomy” division and report directly to Prasad, according to the memo obtained by CNBC and confirmed by Amazon. Geekwire initially reported on these developments.
Amazon is navigating a competitive AI landscape, with rivals like Microsoft and Google rapidly integrating new features into their core products and expanding access to large language models via their public cloud services. While Amazon’s cloud unit has launched various AI services, its proprietary models are generally considered to be trailing those of its primary competitors.
Additionally, Amazon has invested heavily in Anthropic, a competitor to Open AI, and is preparing to enhance its Alexa voice assistant with a new paid version featuring generative AI capabilities. Prasad, formerly a head scientist for Alexa, was appointed in August to lead Amazon’s AGI development, focusing on software that promises advancements approaching human-level capabilities.
Last month, Amazon announced the departure of Adam Selipsky, head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), with Matt Garman, previously head of AWS sales and marketing, succeeding him.
