Amazon has hired the co-founders and some of the team from AI startup Adept to ramp up research around artificial intelligence technology. The Big Tech company has also licensed Adept’s technology. The move is reminiscent of Microsoft when it hired most of Inflection AI’s employees and paid a licensing fee of around $650 million instead of directly acquiring it. 

In a memo shared with employees on Friday, Rohit Prasad, a senior vice president and head scientist supervising Amazon’s AGI division, stated that the company had hired Adept co-founder and CEO David Luan along with “a few other deeply talented members to our AGI team.” 

Luan will be taking care of Amazon’s ‘AGI Autonomy’ segment, and report to Prasad, according to the memo. 

Meanwhile, Adept said it will continue to operate independently of Amazon and has already appointed Zach Brock, its former head of engineering as CEO. 

(For top technology news of the day, subscribe to our tech newsletter Today’s Cache)

Similar to the Microsoft-Inflection deal, Amazon will pay Adept a certain unspecified licensing fee to use some of its AI agent technology that helps automate business tasks. 

The Microsoft tie-up with Inflection is under investigation from the Federal Trade Commission for escaping antitrust regulation. 

Reuters had previously reported that Amazon is investing in training a large language model to rival OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini. 

It was also reported earlier this month that the company revamping its voice assistant Alexa. 

The newly formed AGI team reports directly to company CEO Andy Jassy. Prasad also stated in the memo that the hires “will significantly help us on our quest to achieving AGI.”

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that while the Adept employees had already joined the company, around 20 of them still remained at the startup. 

Sources revealed to Reuters that Adept was also in talks with other tech companies like Meta, which did not want to form a partnership with them.