In a move that is sure to shake up the artificial intelligence industry, e-commerce giant Amazon has recruited top talent from Adept, a startup working to develop next-generation conversational agents.
Adept had been making waves with its vision of creating AI assistants capable of completing software-based tasks using natural language. However, the company was struggling to bring products to market despite raising over $400 million from prominent backers.
Rather than shut down, Adept has now entered a strategic partnership with Amazon. As part of the deal, Adept's patented technology will be licensed to Amazon to accelerate its own agent-focused initiatives. Additionally, Adept's co-founders – including CEO David Luan – have joined Amazon along with other key engineers.
Luan will work under the direction of Rohit Prasad, who leads Amazon's advanced AI division focused on building more human-like assistants. Prasad noted that Adept's expertise in training multimodal conversational models directly complements Amazon's roadmap.
For Adept, the agreement provides a successful exit and ensures its groundbreaking research continues development at one of the world's leading tech firms. Zach Brock, formerly head of engineering at Adept, will now steer the startup in pivoting to other agent-enabling solutions powered by their proprietary technology.
While losing top talent is never ideal, Adept seems to have secured the best possible outcome from its challenging situation. With Amazon's vast resources behind it, the core technologies that first sparked Adept's promise may now have an even greater chance to reach their full potential. This deal signifies Amazon's intensifying investments in AI and growing ambitions to automate workflows through conversational assistants.
