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. This type of deal involves a large company hiring key startup team members and licensing its technology, rather than acquiring the entire company outright.
Adept’s co-founder and former CEO, David Luan, subsequently became the head of Amazon’s new AGI Lab. In a recent interview with The Verge, Luan discussed Amazon’s vision for AI agents and was also asked about the reverse acquihire trend.
Luan replied that he hopes to be remembered more as an AI research innovator than a deal structure innovator. From his perspective, it is perfectly rational for companies like Amazon to build a critical mass of both talent and computing power right now.
Regarding his decision to leave his own startup for Amazon, Luan explained he was not interested in turning Adept into an enterprise company that only sells small models. He wanted to solve what he sees as the four crucial remaining research problems on the path to AGI.
He stated that every single one of those problems will require clusters of computing power costing tens of billions of dollars to run. He concluded by asking how else he would have the opportunity to pursue that goal.