By Greg Bensinger and Krystal Hu
(Reuters) -Amazon.com has hired the co-founders of artificial intelligence startup Adept and part of its team in a move similar to that of rival Microsoft (NASDAQ:), as it seeks to combat the perception that it is is catching up. AI.
Adept said in a blog post on Friday that co-founder and CEO David Luan, as well as several other co-founders and employees, would be leaving to join Amazon (NASDAQ:).
The San Francisco-based startup, which has raised more than $410 million and is valued at more than $1 billion, has already named a new CEO.
The move is similar to that of Microsoft, which in March hired away much of Inflection AI’s leadership and employees and agreed to pay a licensing fee of about $650 million.
That deal has come under heavy scrutiny — the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether the deal was an attempt to circumvent merger disclosure requirements, one person told Reuters earlier this month.
Adept said it would continue to operate independently of Amazon. Amazon will pay Adept a licensing fee to use some of its technology, which helps automate business functions. An Amazon spokesperson declined to disclose the terms of the non-exclusive deal.
Amazon is investing in training an ambitious large-language model, Reuters reports, hoping it can rival the top models from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet (NASDAQ:). Adept’s new additions signal the tech giant’s ambition to work on tools for AI agents, an area where major labs are focusing.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Amazon is rushing to update its Alexa voice assistant to fully integrate generative AI, which can respond almost instantly to complex prompts or questions with complete sentences.
The Amazon spokesperson said the Adept employees have already joined the company and about 20 Adept employees remain at the startup. Adept did not respond to a request for comment.
At Amazon, Luan and several others will report to Rohit Prasad, who oversees artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Others will join the team developing devices and other services, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
Prasad, the former head of Alexa who now reports directly to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, brought in researchers working on Alexa AI and the Amazon science team to work on training models, unifying AI efforts across the company with special means.
Prasad said in the memo that the hires “will significantly assist us in our quest to achieve AGI.”
Adept also held talks with other technology companies, including Meta (NASDAQ:), which decided not to pursue a collaboration or partnership, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Meta declined to comment.
