Amazon AGI Labs chief defends his reverse acquihire

When Amazon hired the founders of AI Startup Adept last year, it was one of the first examples of what became known as a reverse Acquihire – a deal in which a large company hires important startup team members and learns the technology, instead of acquiring the startup.
The co-founder of Adept and former CEO David Luan then became the head of the new Agi Lab of Amazon, and while Luan’s recent interview With the Verge, apparently focused on Amazon’s vision of AI agents, reporter Alex Heath also asked him for The inverted acquisition trend.
Luan replied that he hopes to be “more remembered as an AI research innovator instead of a deal structure -innovator”, but from his perspective it is “completely rational” for companies and Amazon to “compile critical masses on both talent and calculation at the moment”.
Regarding why he was willing to leave his startup for Amazon, Luan said that he was not interested in making adept in a “a business company that only sells small models” because he wanted to solve the four crucial remaining research problems to AGI. “
“Each of them will need two digit dollars clusters to make it run,” he said. ‘How am I different […] Are you going to get the chance to do that? “




