Amazon AGI Labs chief defends his reverse acquihire

When Amazon hired the founders of AI startup Adept final 12 months, it was one of many first examples of what turned often called a reverse acquihire — a deal the place a big firm hires key startup workforce members and licenses its expertise, moderately than buying the startup outright.

Adept’s co-founder and former CEO David Luan subsequently turned the head of Amazon’s new AGI Lab, and whereas Luan’s recent interview with The Verge is ostensibly centered on Amazon’s imaginative and prescient for AI brokers, reporter Alex Heath additionally requested him about the reverse acquihire trend.

Luan replied that hopes to be “remembered extra as being an AI analysis innovator moderately than a deal construction innovator,” — however from his perspective, it’s “completely rational” for corporations like Amazon to “put collectively essential mass on each expertise and compute proper now.”

As for why he was prepared to depart his startup for Amazon, Luan stated he wasn’t taken with turning Adept right into a “an enterprise firm that solely sells small fashions,” as a result of he wished to resolve “the 4 essential remaining analysis issues left to AGI.”

“Each single one among them goes to require two-digit billion-dollar clusters to go run it,” he stated. “How else am I […] going to have the chance to go try this?”