New Delhi: Amazon has hired key founders from the AI startup Adept, which develops AI “agents” to perform tasks in various software applications. Geekwire’s Taylor Soper first reported this news. As per the report, Adept co-founder and CEO David Luan, along with co-founders Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen, Kelsey Szot, and other employees, will join Amazon.
Despite this, Adept will remain operational. Zach Brock, previously head of engineering, will become the new CEO as Adept shifts its focus to “solutions that enable agentic AI.” In a blog post, Adept mentioned that their products would still use their existing in-house AI models, data, software for web interactions, and custom infrastructure. The startup decided to concentrate on their agent vision instead of raising funds for both general intelligence and enterprise agent products.
This move offers a lifeline for Adept, which has been in talks with Meta and Microsoft for a possible acquisition. Microsoft had previously invested in Adept. For Amazon, this means gaining valuable talent and technology to support its AI goals. According to Geekwire, David Luan will report to Rohit Prasad, the former head of Alexa, who now leads a new team focused on building large language models. Prasad stated that Luan and his team’s expertise aligns with Amazon’s aim to create useful AI solutions for consumers and businesses.
Adept was founded two years ago with the goal of creating an AI model that can perform actions on any software using natural language. This idea, now shared by companies like OpenAI and Rabbit, was to develop an “AI teammate” capable of using various software tools and APIs. Adept attracted investors like Nvidia, Atlassian, Workday, and Greylock, raising over $415 million and reaching a valuation of around $1 billion. However, Adept faced issues such as the early departure of co-founders Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, and struggled to launch a product despite extensive testing.
The market for AI agents has become more crowded since Adept’s start, with well-funded startups like Orby and Emergence entering the field. Grand View Research estimated the AI agents’ market to be worth $4.2 billion in 2022. The partnership with Amazon might help Adept succeed, or it could end up like Inflection, another AI startup whose talent was largely acquired by Microsoft. Additionally, regulators might scrutinize these types of talent acquisitions more closely following recent Supreme Court decisions.
