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Written by Greg Bensinger and Crystal Ho
(Reuters) – Amazon.com has hired the founders of artificial intelligence startup Adept and some members of its team in a move that mimics one by rival Microsoft (NASDAQ:), as it seeks to fight the perception that it is playing catch-up in AI. .
Adept said in a blog post on Friday that co-founder and CEO David Luan, along with several other co-founders and employees, are 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 one taken by Microsoft, which in March hired much of Inflection AI’s leadership and staff and agreed to pay a licensing fee of about $650 million.
The deal has drawn regulatory scrutiny, with the Federal Trade Commission looking into whether the deal was an attempt to skirt merger disclosure requirements, one of the people told Reuters earlier this month.
Adept said it will continue to operate independently from Amazon. Amazon will pay Adept a licensing fee to use some of its technology, which helps automate business functions. An Amazon spokesman declined to disclose terms of the non-exclusive deal.
Amazon is investing in training an ambitious large language model, Reuters reported, hoping it can compete with the best models from OpenAI and Microsoft-backed Alphabet (NASDAQ: ). The new additions from Adept signal the tech giant’s ambition to work on AI client tools, an area where its main labs are focused.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Amazon is racing to update its Alexa voice assistant to fully integrate generative AI, which can respond almost instantly with full sentences to complex prompts or queries.
An Amazon spokesperson said Adept employees have already joined the company, and about 20 workers remain at the startup. Adept did not respond to a request for comment.
At Amazon, Luan and a number of employees will report to Rohit Prasad, who oversees general artificial intelligence. Others will join the team that develops other hardware and services, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
Prasad, the former head of Alexa who now reports directly to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, has brought in researchers from Alexa AI and Amazon’s science team to work on training models, unifying AI efforts across the company with dedicated resources.
The employees “will greatly assist us in our quest to achieve artificial general intelligence,” Prasad said in the memo.
Adept has also held discussions with other tech companies including Meta (NASDAQ: ), which has decided not to pursue any partnership or tie-up, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Meta declined to comment.
