Amazon hired Adept’s founders last year in a “reverse acquihire” deal that’s turning heads. Instead of buying the startup outright, Amazon scooped up the key team and licensed Adept’s tech.
Adept co-founder and former CEO David Luan now leads Amazon’s new AGI Lab. He recently talked to The Verge’s Alex Heath about Amazon’s AI goals—and the reverse acquihire trend.
Luan wants to be known as an AI research pioneer, not a deal innovator. But he says it’s smart for giants like Amazon to bulk up on talent and computing power right now. 
He also explained why he left Adept for Amazon: he’s chasing “the four crucial remaining research problems left to AGI.” That’s not something you can solve with small models or a startup-sized budget.
“Every single one of them is going to require two-digit billion-dollar clusters to go run it,” David Luan said.
“How else am I […] going to have the opportunity to go do that?”
Amazon’s bet on Adept’s top minds shows how critical huge compute and talent are for AGI progress. The reverse acquihire could become a new norm for AI talent grabs.
