After layoffs in AGI division, shutdown of Lab, Amazon is reorganizing teams and refocusing its AI strategy
Amazon is shaking things up in its artificial intelligence (AI) division. Those changes include winding down a number of flagship in-house models, closing down specialized research groups, and consolidating its engineering talent behind a pared-down frontier-model effort. The shift comes on the heels of recent layoffs within Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) organisation and the complete shutdown of AGI Lab, which was a high-profile research unit formed in 2024 following the acquisition of key talent from AI startup Adept.According to a report by Business Insider, instead of spreading resources across multiple text, image and video generation projects, the tech giant is redirecting compute power and technical staff toward a single primary initiative designed to keep pace with industry rivals.
Amazon is ‘killing’ flagship models
Citing internal sources, the report says that Amazon has begun ‘deprecating’ several prominent models from its Nova lineup. These include high-end Premier and Omni models, the Reel video generator and the Canvas image generator.The sources describe these systems to the publication as shifting into a “keep the lights on” (KTLO) state, which is a technical designation, meaning the software remains active for existing enterprise clients but will no longer receive active development or feature updates.The remaining Nova suite will continue to maintain select lightweight and task-specific offerings, including the Nova 2 Sonic and Nova 2 Lite models, alongside Nova Forge for model customisation and Nova Act for AI agent development, the report noted.
What Amazon has to say
In a statement addressing the portfolio changes, an Amazon spokesperson told BI that model evolution reflects standard lifecycle management:“AI models remain one of the most important things we’re working on, and that hasn’t changed. As with any AI portfolio, we continually evolve our model lineup based on what customers need, and we always provide customers clear guidance and migration paths as models advance,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Amazon’s AI roboticist to head frontier model research
Engineering priorities and hardware resources are now consolidating under Frontier Model Research (FMR), an initiative led by renowned AI roboticist Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon via its acquisition of Covariant. Under Abbeel’s leadership, FMR is tasked with building Amazon’s next-generation foundation model, which is expected to debut at the company’s annual re:Invent conference.
