Amazon is winding down several Nova models and reorganizing AI teams after layoffs, focusing resources on a new frontier-model effort led by Covariant co-founder Pieter Abbeel.
Amazon is winding down several of its in-house AI models and reorganizing engineering teams around a new frontier-model push, Business Insider reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the plans.
The changes follow job cuts last week at the company's Artificial General Intelligence division and the shuttering of AGI Lab, a research group Amazon launched in 2024 after hiring most of the team from AI startup Adept. The restructuring signals a sharper focus on the highest-priority AI projects rather than spreading resources across text, image, and video models, the people said.
Amazon has started phasing out most of its flagship Nova models, including the high-end Premier and Omni models, the Reel video-generation model, and the Canvas image-generation model, according to the report. Some employees described these models as being in "KTLO" mode -- an engineering term for software that still supports existing customers but is no longer a primary development focus, the news outlet said.
Resources are shifting toward a new effort overseen by researcher Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon when it acquired Covariant, the AI robotics startup he helped found, the sources said.
In a statement, Amazon pushed back on the characterization, saying it continues to invest in and support the Nova lineup, including Nova Forge, which lets businesses build their own models.
"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 company said. "We generally support our models in production for extended periods because this is important to our customers. We're also investing in the next generation of frontier model research, and Amazon's commitment to building advanced AI models is as strong as it's ever been."
The reorganization follows a Reuters report last week that founder Jeff Bezos was calling for a revamp of Prime Video to showcase the company's AI capabilities more clearly.
Amazon's Alpha Score sits at 68 out of 100, a Moderate rating, according to AlphaScala data. The stock page for AGI is available here.
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