How much backtracking are we going to see from incumbents in the months ahead?

What’s going on Amazon?

BI says Amazon is fundamentally reorganizing its in-house artificial intelligence operations. The company is “winding down development” on several prominent Nova models and consolidating its resources behind a unified, next-generation frontier model effort led by robotics pioneer Pieter Abbeel. Amazon joins the likes of Microsoft in failed incumbent in-house model strategies.

Last week Amazon shut down its AGI Lab, a research group it created in 2024 after hiring most of the team behind AI startup Adept.

So sorry to hear!

Amazon is increasingly moving resources toward a frontier-model ​development, led by researcher Pieter Abbeel that you have to assume is more Physical AI related.

Incredible failures in AI are occuring that aren’t being talked about. The layoffs occured in the AGI unit is/was focused on building AI models, and it also includes groups working on silicon development and even quantum computing initiatives. AGI employees focused on model customization and post-training were among those who said they were let go, according to LinkedIn posts.

Amazon has laid off more than 30,000 staffers since October to help pay for its enormous AI capex.