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 acqui-hire. This type of deal involves a large company hiring key startup team members and licensing its technology, rather than acquiring the startup outright.
Adept’s co-founder and former CEO David Luan subsequently became the head of Amazon’s new AGI Lab. While Luan’s recent interview with The Verge was ostensibly focused on Amazon’s vision for AI agents, he was also asked about the reverse acqui-hire trend.
Luan replied that he hopes to be remembered more as an AI research innovator rather than a deal structure innovator. From his perspective, it is perfectly rational for companies like Amazon to put together critical mass on both talent and compute right now.
As for why he was willing to leave his startup for Amazon, Luan said he was not interested in turning Adept into an enterprise company that only sells small models. He wanted to solve the four crucial remaining research problems left to AGI.
He stated that every single one of those problems is going to require two-digit billion-dollar clusters to run them. He questioned how else he would have the opportunity to go and do that.