Amazon Is Gutting Its AI Division After Sustained Failure(futurism.com)
330 points by dpflan 21 hours ago | 258 comments
tl;dr: Amazon is scaling back most of its in-house Nova AI models—including text, image, and video generators—placing them in "keep the lights on" mode while redirecting resources to a single "frontier-model effort" led by former Covariant founder Pieter Abbeel. The move follows the closure of Amazon's 80-person San Francisco AGI research office last week, suggesting the company is retreating from the broader LLM race to focus on robotics-oriented AI aligned with its automation goals.
HN Discussion:
  • ↑Amazon's culture and talent pool can't support frontier AI innovation
  • ↑Hosting third-party models is more profitable than developing in-house
  • ↑Big tech stagnation opens the door for AI-native companies to dominate
  • ↓Headline is misleading since Amazon is refocusing, not abandoning AI
  • ↑Firsthand testing confirms Nova is markedly inferior to competitors