Amazon cuts AGI jobs and winds down Nova models as AI strategy pivots to frontier research

Amazon's AGI department finds humans are optional

AI remains its biggest bet, Bezos brigade tells El Reg, even as another round of layoffs reaches the teams building it Amazon may be spending billions on AI, but that hasn't stopped it from cutting jobs inside the very organization building it. The megacorp confirmed to The Register on Thursday that it has eliminated an undisclosed number of roles across parts of its Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) biz, even as it insists AI remains a key priority. The cuts are the latest in a restructuring that has seen Amazon shed more than 30,000 employees since October - including 16,000 announced in January - while pouring cash into AI infrastructure, custom silicon, and foundation models, with $200 billion in capex projected for 2026. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," an Amazon spokesperson told The Register. "This is a fast-moving space, and we're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts. "That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future. We're committed to supporting impacted employees through their transition and we're grateful for their contributions," the spokesperson added. Amazon hasn't said how many people were affected or exactly which teams were hit. Employees posting publicly said the layoffs reached groups working on model customization and post-training, with some reporting cuts of around 10 percent. Reuters separately reported that the layoffs also affected teams led by AGI Data Services vice president Adeeb Shanaa and AGI Information vice president Vishal Sharma. The move lands less than a year after Amazon overhauled its AI leadership, with longtime executive Peter DeSantis taking charge of the AGI organization as the company moved to accelerate development of its Nova family of foundation models and broader generative AI strategy. If there's a contradiction in laying off AI workers while telling investors AI is the company's future, Amazon doesn't see one. Building the future, it seems, doesn't guarantee you'll be around to see it. ®

Amazon winds down most flagship AI models in strategy overhaul, Business Insider reports

July 28 (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab is revamping its AI strategy, winding down many of its in-house AI models and sharpening focus on a new frontier-model effort, Business Insider reported on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter. The company has begun deprecating most of its flagship Nova AI models, including the high-end Premier and Omni models, Reel video-generation model, and Canvas image-generation model, the report said. Instead, Amazon is increasingly moving resources toward a frontier-model development, led by researcher Pieter Abbeel, with frontier research becoming ⁠a top priority this year at the company, the report added. The new flagship model is expected to debut at Amazon's "re:Invent" annual conference later this year, Business Insider said. Amazon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report. The move comes just days after Amazon trimmed jobs in its artificial general intelligence (AGI) group, with a spokesperson saying last week that the company was sharpening its focus on "the initiatives that matter most for customers". Amazon has struggled to ⁠generate a buzz around its Nova models the way rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have. The company has instead doubled down on providing crucial cloud and AI infrastructure for enterprises. But Amazon is not abandoning Nova altogether and the new frontier model could ⁠emerge under the Nova brand, Business Insider reported. Amazon's Nova family of models also includes Nova 2 Lite and Nova 2 Sonic models, as well as Nova Forge -- a ⁠service from Amazon that allows customers to build their own AI models using Nova. Amazon's AGI efforts have undergone several changes since they took shape in ⁠2023. The company consolidated its AGI work under longtime cloud executive Peter DeSantis in December, and has seen several top AGI executives depart over the past year. Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Amazon cuts some jobs in its artificial general intelligence unit

Amazon is laying off some employees in its unit focused on artificial general intelligence, the company confirmed Wednesday, as it continues to cut jobs while pouring money into AI. The company declined to disclose how many staffers were affected, or which parts of the AGI organization were exposed to the cuts. The AGI unit is focused on building AI models, and also includes groups working on silicon development and quantum computing initiatives. "This is a fast-moving space, and we're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts," an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. "That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future." Reuters first reported the layoffs. Amazon has been downsizing over the past several years following a pandemic hiring binge, and as it commits massive sums to building out AI infrastructure. The company has laid off more than 30,000 staffers since last October, and has continued to eliminate roles through smaller rounds in recent months. The AGI unit is a core part of Amazon's AI strategy as the company tries to keep pace with leaders OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. AGI generally refers to AI that can perform as well or better than humans on most tasks. In 2024, Amazon's AGI group released a set of foundation models, called Nova. The unit took on a more expansive focus last December when Amazon tapped longtime cloud executive Peter DeSantis to replace Rohit Prasad as the head of the group. In February, the company lost the head of its AGI lab, David Luan, who joined Amazon in 2024 through a so-called acquihire of his startup Adept. Amazon's spokesperson said the company has been building large AI models for several years and "it remains one of the most important things we're working on." DeSantis acknowledged in an interview with CNBC last month that Amazon's models "haven't been at the very frontier for the very largest, most demanding workloads." He said Amazon has been working to shore up its models further and it hopes to have one of the "most capable intelligent models out there." Amazon is scheduled to report second-quarter results next week. The company has forecast capital expenditures for the year of $200 billion, an increase of more than 50% from 2025, and is raising tens of billions of dollars in debt to help fund its AI buildout.

Amazon shuts its AGI Lab in fresh AI layoffs

Amazon has quietly shut its AGI Lab, the team it set up barely 18 months ago to chase human-level AI, folding it into fresh layoffs. Both the executive who ran Amazon's AGI push and the lab's own head had already left. It is the clearest sign yet that Amazon has stepped back from a frontier-model race it never really led. Amazon is retreating from the race to build the smartest AI. This week it closed its AGI Lab, a San Francisco team working on artificial general intelligence, The Information reported. The move was part of layoffs across Amazon's AGI unit, Reuters first reported. The lab was barely 18 months old. Amazon set it up in December 2024 with several dozen staff. Its job was to make AI agents more useful to businesses. Now it is gone, and the people who built it are being let go. The full scale of the cuts is not yet clear. Amazon frames this as focus, not surrender. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," a spokesperson said. The company is "sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers". That focus, it added, meant "eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization". The people at the top left first The exits came before the layoffs. Rohit Prasad, the executive who oversaw Amazon's AGI work, left at the end of last year. David Luan, who ran the AGI Lab, left in February. Amazon then folded its AGI work under Peter DeSantis, alongside its chip and quantum teams. The pattern is not new. This is the latest in a rolling series of cuts since Amazon shed 16,000 jobs in January. Across tech, firms are trimming teams and pointing at AI. Losing two leaders and a whole lab in quick succession says a lot. A frontier race Amazon never led Amazon has spent a fortune on AI, but rarely at the frontier. Its own models have made little dent, and its real strategy runs through AWS and its huge AI spending on infrastructure. Where rivals build the smartest model, Amazon sells the picks and shovels, plus agents that plug into businesses. Its big model bet is external, with tens of billions poured into Anthropic. There is a wider doubt in the background, too. A growing camp argues that today's large language models are not the road to general intelligence at all. Whether Amazon shares that view or is simply chasing profit, the message is the same. The company that wants to power everyone else's AI has stopped trying to build the cleverest brain itself. Its AI ambitions now point at selling AI, not inventing it.

Amazon confirms it's closing key AI site in San Francisco but says work on its top models continues

Amazon is closing its San Francisco AGI site as part of the layoffs it made this week in its artificial general intelligence organization, but said its frontier model research lab will continue. A company spokesperson confirmed the news of the site closure, which was first reported by The Information. Amazon's frontier model research work will carry on under Pieter Abbeel, a UC Berkeley professor who joined Amazon in 2024 when the company licensed the technology and hired the team from Covariant, the robotics startup he co-founded. The AGI Lab was founded in December 2024 and initially built around several dozen employees Amazon brought in from the startup Adept, including its co-founder and CEO David Luan. The team grew to about 80 people at its peak, according to The Information, but more than a dozen of the Adept hires have since left, Luan among them. Earlier this week, Amazon confirmed it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs across the broader AGI organization. Impacted employees will have the chance to explore other roles at Amazon, the spokesperson said, and the company is supporting them through that process. Nova Act, the browser-agent model and service that came out of the group, remains available on AWS and in use by customers. More broadly, AWS has continued to build out its agentic AI lineup, including Bedrock AgentCore and applications like Kiro, Quick, Continuum and Transform. The moves come as Amazon invests heavily in helping customers deploy AI, including a $1 billion AWS effort to embed engineers with businesses building AI agents. The initiative reflects an expanded industry focus toward putting agents and models to better use for customers.

Amazon cuts jobs in its artificial general intelligence group

SAN FRANCISCO, July 22 (Reuters) - Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab on Wednesday cut jobs in its artificial general intelligence group, marking the latest in a series of smaller reductions across the company since a much larger one in January. Artificial general intelligence is a hypothetical AI system that surpasses human intelligence ⁠and can learn, grow and operate autonomously. Many of the top AI companies are working to develop similar systems, with the hope of deploying them to solve difficult problems. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most ⁠important things we're working on," said an Amazon spokesman following a Reuters inquiry. "We're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for ⁠customers, so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including ⁠eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization." It could not immediately be learned ⁠how many were impacted Wednesday. Amazon cut 16,000 jobs across the company in January. Reporting by Greg Bensinger; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * World at Work Greg Bensinger Thomson Reuters Greg Bensinger joined Reuters as a technology correspondent in 2022 focusing on the world's largest technology companies. He was previously a member of The New York Times editorial board and a technology beat reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for Bloomberg News writing about the auto and telecommunications industries. He studied English literature at The University of Virginia and graduate journalism at Columbia University. Greg lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

Amazon cuts jobs in AGI group as it puts more focus on customer-facing AI

Amazon confirmed Wednesday that it laid off an unspecified number of employees in its artificial general intelligence (AGI) organization, the division working on the company's advanced AI models. The move, first reported by Reuters, comes as the company invests heavily in programs to help businesses implement AI effectively, including a $1 billion initiative to embed AWS engineers with customers building agentic AI systems. It's part of a larger shift in the industry as tech giants and AI frontier labs look to make sure the enormous sums they're spending on AI pay off in tools businesses actually use. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said building large AI models remains "one of the most important things we're working on," but said the company is also "sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts." "That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future," the spokesperson said. It's the latest in a series of changes in Amazon's AGI group, which despite its name has always been focused more on frontier models than on what the industry considers AGI, the still-theoretical systems that would match or surpass human intelligence. Rohit Prasad, the senior executive who oversaw Amazon's AGI work, left the company late last year, and AGI Lab head David Luan departed in February. In December, Amazon folded the AGI group into a larger organization led by senior vice president Peter DeSantis that also includes chip development and quantum computing. The cuts are the latest in a series of smaller reductions since January, when Amazon eliminated 16,000 jobs across the company. Amazon said U.S. employees whose jobs are cut will receive 90 days of pay and benefits, outplacement support and transitional health coverage, along with eligibility for severance.

Amazon Is Gutting Its AI Division After Sustained Failure

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech By now, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't broadly familiar with the AI heavyweights and their flagship models. OpenAI has ChatGPT, Anthropic has Claude, Google has Gemini. But what does Amazon have? Not a whole lot, it turns out. Unlike its competitors in the tech megacorp scene, Amazon's standout AI model -- organized under the name "Nova" -- is about the farthest thing from a household name. And that's not likely to change anytime soon, because the ecommerce giant is now gutting its in-house AI labs, Bloomberg reports. Per the outlet, Amazon is scaling back the ambitions of most of its Nova AI models and reorganizing its AI development teams as part of an effort to narrow its focus on "highest priority" goals, after its power-hungry large language models turned out to be a bust. Accordingly, the company has put most of its AI models on ice, Amazon insiders told Bloomberg. This includes its text-based Nova models, as well as video- and image-generating models, all of which have been placed in a state of "keep the lights on," meaning they're technically still supported, but only receive the bare minimum resources needed to sustain them. Instead, labor and computing power are being diverted toward a singular "frontier-model effort" led by Pieter Abbeel, director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab whose robotics company Covariant was hoovered up by Amazon in 2024. At the time Abbeel joined the tech giant, Covariant's founders were working on AI models for robots, which lines up pretty well with Amazon's push to automate everything it possibly can. News of the shift in Amazon's strategic focus comes a week after it closed one of its key AI offices in San Francisco, an 80-person site specializing in research on artificial general intelligence, the supposed next-level of AI development where the tech obtains human-level intelligence and reasoning skills. With urgent questions swirling over whether LLMs can ever usher in a return on investment -- let alone AGI -- it may be that Amazon is jumping out of the AI hype cycle while it still can.

Amazon winds down most flagship AI models in strategy overhaul, Business Insider reports

Amazon is shifting its artificial intelligence strategy towards new frontier models. The company is deprecating many of its existing Nova AI models. Resources are now moving towards a new frontier-model development effort. This new flagship model is expected to debut later this year. Amazon recently trimmed jobs in its artificial general intelligence group. Amazon.com is revamping its AI strategy, winding down many of its in-house AI models and sharpening focus on a new frontier-model effort, Business Insider reported on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter. The company has begun deprecating most of its flagship Nova AI models, including the high-end Premier and Omni models, ⁠Reel video-generation ⁠model, and Canvas image-generation model, the report said. Instead, Amazon is increasingly moving resources toward a frontier-model development, led by researcher Pieter Abbeel, with frontier research becoming a top priority this year at the company, the report added. The new flagship model is expected to debut at Amazon's "re:Invent" annual conference later this year, Business Insider said. Amazon did ⁠not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report. The move comes just days after Amazon trimmed jobs in ⁠its artificial general intelligence (AGI) group, with a spokesperson saying last week that the company was sharpening its focus on "the initiatives that matter most for customers". Amazon has struggled to generate a buzz around its Nova models the way rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have. The company has instead doubled down on providing crucial cloud and AI infrastructure for enterprises. But Amazon is not abandoning Nova altogether and the new frontier model could emerge under the Nova brand, Business Insider reported. Amazon's Nova family of models also includes ⁠Nova 2 Lite and Nova 2 Sonic models, as well as Nova Forge - a service from Amazon that allows customers to build their own AI models using Nova. Amazon's AGI efforts have undergone several changes since they took shape in 2023. The company consolidated its AGI work under longtime cloud executive Peter DeSantis in December, and has seen several top AGI executives depart over the past year.

Amazon Confirms AGI Layoffs Ahead Of Q2 Earnings Report

'We're grateful for the contributions of every impacted employee,' an Amazon spokesperson says. Amazon has confirmed to CRN that it is "eliminating some roles" within its division for artificial general intelligence -- a theoretical AI that understands, learns and applies knowledge just like a human -- days ahead of when the company reports earnings for its second fiscal quarter. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," a spokesperson for the Seattle-based technology giant said in an email to CRN on Wednesday. "This is a fast-moving space, and we're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future." Amazon did not disclose how many employees were affected. The spokesperson added that Amazon is "committed to supporting impacted employees through their transition," with U.S. employees receiving "pay and benefits for 90 days, outplacement job search support, access to transitional health benefits, and be eligible for a severance payment. We're grateful for the contributions of every impacted employee." [RELATED: Intel Confirms Data Center Group Layoffs Ahead Of Q2 Results] Amazon Confirms Artificial General Intelligence Workforce Cuts Ted Stuart, president and chief operating officer of Amazon Web Services-focused cloud services provider Mission Cloud, which is part of CDW, recently told CRN in an interview that his company is investing in AI-focused products including AIM, or AI with Mission, a spin on the AI Roadmap Prioritization (AIR) Workshop from AWS, and Five-by-Five-by-Five, based on Amazon Quick. "We also offer a fixed-fee chatbot and an agentic POC (proof of concept)," Stuart said. "Then, depending on what's important to the customer and what their use cases are, we'll go from there." Multiple AWS partners have looked at ways to combine that practice with one dedicated to an AI upstart such as Anthropic. BizCloud Experts President Sepehr Noorizadeh told CRN in a recent interview that, for example, BizCloud leveraged both companies' technology to improve how a client handled customer quotes and invoice scheduling. "What we've done is look at how can we collaborate with the AWS team and the Anthropic team to actually find the purpose-fit model for them (customers), and provide that feedback loop back to Anthropic and to the AWS team on what we're seeing in the front line for customers," BizCloud Experts President Sepehr Noorizadeh told CRN in a recent interview. Although Amazon has continued to invest in AI and new AI capabilities across its product stack that can appeal to businesses in the short term, AGI remains a more far-flung version of the technology. Industry timelines for AGI range from 2027 to 2040 and beyond. AGI-related executives who have left the company in recent months include David Luan, the former vice president and head of Amazon's AGI Lab and agentic AI research and development (R&D). Amazon reports its next quarterly earnings on July 30, covering the three months ended June 30. The vendor has been cutting tens of thousands of employees as it prioritizes AI investments and following massive hiring increases industrywide during the global pandemic. Other layoffs conducted and announced so far this year include Intel's Data Center Group, Cisco cutting thousands of jobs, NetApp permanently letting go of 77 employees from around its San Jose, Calif., headquarters, and Cognizant's plans to spend upward of $270 million on employee severance and other personnel-related costs as part of layoffs under its "Project Leap" initiative to become more agile and enable an artificial intelligence-enabled operating model.

Amazon cuts jobs in its artificial general intelligence group

Artificial general intelligence is a hypothetical AI system that surpasses human intelligence ⁠and can ⁠learn, grow and operate autonomously. Many of the top AI companies are working to develop similar systems, with the hope of deploying them to solve difficult problems. Amazon on Wednesday cut jobs in its artificial general intelligence group, marking the latest in a series of smaller reductions across the company since a much larger one in January. Artificial general intelligence is a hypothetical AI system that surpasses human intelligence ⁠and can ⁠learn, grow and operate autonomously. Many of the top AI companies are working to develop similar systems, with the hope of deploying them to solve difficult problems. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," said ⁠an Amazon spokesman following a Reuters inquiry. "We're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, ⁠so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization." Rohit Prasad, a top Amazon executive overseeing AGI, left the company at the end of last year and the head of its AGI Lab, David Luan, left in February. AGI work was consolidated under senior vice president Peter DeSantis in December as part of a larger group that also ⁠includes silicon development and quantum computing. Employees under Adeeb Shanaa, vice president of artificial general intelligence data services, and Vishal Sharma, vice president of AGI information, reported being impacted by the cuts on online forums on Wednesday. However, the full scope of the cuts could not immediately be learned. Amazon cut 16,000 jobs across the company in January.

Amazon Mounts AI Reorganization Following Layoffs | PYMNTS.com

The tech giant is also reorganizing teams and having engineers focus on a new strategy that involves competing at the frontier level, Business Insider reported Tuesday (July 28), citing sources familiar with the matter. The report noted that these changes follow job cuts last week at Amazon's Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) division and the closure of AGI Lab, a research group it launched in 2024 after hiring most of the team at AI startup Adept. Business Insider argued this restructuring indicates Amazon is refocusing its AI strategy, concentrating talent and computing resources on its largest priorities, rather than investing in text, image and video models. Sources told the news outlet that Amazon has started phasing out most of its in-house flagship Nova models, such as the high-end Premier and Omni models, Reel video-generation model, and Canvas image-generation model. Some employees said these models are now in "KTLO" ("keep the lights on") mode, an engineering term for software that still supports existing customers but is not considered a chief development priority, the Business Insider report added. According to the publication's sources, Amazon is shifting resources from its Nova models and toward a new frontier-model effort overseen by researcher Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon when it acquired Covariant, the AI robotics startup he helped found. In a statement provided to PYMNTS, Amazon said it continues to invest and support the Nova models, including Nova Forge, which allows businesses to 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 news follows a report from Reuters last week that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was calling for a revamp of the Prime Video streaming service to offer users a better idea of the company's AI capabilities. In other Amazon news, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that an increasing number of consumers took part in the company's recent shopping event -- and that of rival Walmart -- even as spending on both events fell. "That trade-off offers a preview of the next phase of promotional retail," PYMNTS wrote last week. "The biggest shopping events may attract more people than ever, but they are also becoming less capable of concentrating consumer spending in one place."

Amazon winds down Nova Premier, Omni, Reel, and Canvas, reshaping its entire AI strategy

Amazon launched its Nova family of AI models at re:Invent in December 2024 with much fanfare: Nova Premier, Nova Omni, Nova Reel, Nova Canvas. The pitch was that Amazon was building affordable, capable alternatives to the models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. It was a broad lineup designed to show the market that AWS wasn't just cloud infrastructure anymore. It was an AI company. Less than two years later, Amazon is quietly pulling most of those models. Reuters reported on July 28 that Amazon has begun deprecating most of its flagship Nova models and reorganizing its AI teams around a single frontier-model effort. The overhaul is the most significant reset of Amazon's AI strategy since the Nova launch. Which Amazon Nova AI models are being discontinued and what survives The list of what's going away is significant. Nova Premier and Nova Omni, Amazon's high-end foundation models, are being moved into what engineers internally call KTLO status, short for "keep the lights on." That means they stay supported for existing customers but are no longer a development priority. Nova Reel, the video-generation model, and Nova Canvas, the image-generation model, are in the same situation. What survives is a much smaller set. Nova 2 Lite and Nova 2 Sonic remain active. Nova Forge, which lets customers build and customize their own models using Amazon's technology, stays. Nova Act, Amazon's AI agent platform, continues in active development, according to Reuters. "As with any AI portfolio, we continually evolve our model lineup based on what customers need," an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters. "We're continuing to invest in and support the Nova models our customers rely on today. We're also investing in the next generation of frontier model research." Amazon's new AI frontier push and what it's building The resources being pulled from the deprecated Nova models are going to a new internal group called Frontier Model Research, or FMR. It's led by Pieter Abbeel, a UC Berkeley professor who came to Amazon through its acquisition of AI robotics startup Covariant in 2024. FMR has become the top internal priority inside Amazon's AGI organization this year. The team is building a new flagship foundation model expected to debut at Amazon's re:Invent conference later in 2026. It may still carry the Nova brand when it launches, but it represents a fundamentally different approach than the broad portfolio Amazon previously maintained. Instead of several specialized models for text, image, audio, and video, Amazon is concentrating on a single frontier-scale system designed to compete directly with the top models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The AGI organization itself has also been restructured. It now reports to Peter DeSantis, a longtime Amazon cloud executive who also oversees the company's custom silicon and quantum computing efforts. Several senior AGI executives have departed over the past year, including Rohit Prasad, who had been the public face of Amazon's AI efforts since the Alexa era. Why Amazon is cutting AI models rather than expanding them The honest answer is that Nova wasn't generating the attention Amazon needed it to. While OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google were dominating the conversation around frontier AI, Amazon's models were getting used by enterprise customers through AWS but weren't breaking through as a brand or a benchmark story. The economics weren't working, either. Running and developing multiple foundation model families across text, image, audio, and video is expensive, and spreading engineering talent across all of them dilutes the results, according to Neowin. The shutdown of AGI Lab makes the same point. Amazon built that research group in 2024 after hiring most of the team from AI startup Adept. It was meant to accelerate Amazon's AGI research. Less than two years later, it's closed, and the people who remained have been absorbed into FMR or moved elsewhere in the organization. Amazon has always been better at being the picks-and-shovels play in AI than at being the AI company itself. Its investment in Anthropic, its cloud infrastructure for AI workloads, and its chip development through Trainium and Inferentia have all been performing. Its own models, less so. This reorganization is an acknowledgment of that reality. What Amazon's AI strategy overhaul means for AWS customers, AMZN investors For AWS customers currently using Nova Premier, Nova Omni, Nova Reel, or Nova Canvas, the KTLO designation means their workloads stay supported. They're not being cut off tomorrow. But they also shouldn't expect meaningful improvements to those models going forward. If they want Amazon's best capabilities, they'll eventually need to migrate to whatever emerges from FMR at re:Invent. For investors, this is actually a more disciplined story than the one Amazon was telling before. Spreading engineering talent and compute across a dozen model families is expensive and produces mediocre results across the board. Concentrating everything on a single frontier effort is how you build something that can compete with GPT-5 and Gemini. Whether Abbeel's team can deliver that at re:Invent is the question investors will be watching. Amazon reports earnings on July 30. Andy Jassy will almost certainly be asked about the AI reorganization on the call. What he says about the Nova deprecations, the FMR timeline, and how Amazon thinks about competing at the frontier will matter more than almost anything else in the report. The strategy has changed. The market will want to know if the new one is working. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 29, 2026 at 9:17 AM.

Amazon Trims AGI Team to Focus on Core Initiatives | PYMNTS.com

The move follows Amazon's consolidation of AGI work into part of a larger group that also includes silicon development and quantum computing in December 2025, the departure of AGI-focused executive Rohit Prasad at the end of 2025, and the departure of AGI lab leader David Luan in February, according to the report. It's also one of a series of smaller workforce reductions Amazon has made since a much bigger round of layoffs in January, the report said. Employees reported being impacted by the cuts in the AGI group in posts on online forums Wednesday, but the scope of the cuts is not clear, per the report. Asked about the reports by Reuters, an Amazon spokesperson said: "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on. We're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced in a Dec. 17, 2025 message that the AGI team was being included in a newly formed organization that brought together the company's AI models, silicon development and quantum computing, and is led by Peter DeSantis. Jassy also said in the message that Prasad, who led the creation of the AGI organization over the previous two years, had decided to leave Amazon. "The path ahead is full of opportunity," Jassy said in the message. "With the foundation that's been built, the traction we're seeing, and Peter's leadership bringing unified focus to these technologies, we're well-positioned to lead and deliver meaningful capabilities for our customers. I'm excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon's future." AGI refers to the development of intelligent machines that can think, learn and perform any intellectual task that a human can, PYMNTS reported in April 2024. Unlike AI systems that are designed to excel at specific tasks, AGI aims to create machines that can think and reason like humans, adapt to new challenges and learn from experience.

Amazon Cuts Jobs in AGI Division, Doubles Down on Core AI Projects

Amazon has laid off employees in parts of its Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) division as it reshapes its AI teams to focus on projects with the biggest customer impact. The move is the latest in a series of smaller job cuts across the company since Amazon eliminated 16,000 roles in January as part of a wider restructuring. The company has not disclosed how many employees were affected by the latest round of layoffs. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," an Amazon spokesperson said, adding, "We're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter the most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization."

Amazon cuts jobs in artificial general intelligence unit By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has laid off some of its workforce in the artificial general intelligence division on Wednesday, continuing a pattern of smaller workforce reductions following a larger elimination in January. The company removed positions from its AGI group, which focuses on developing AI systems designed to surpass human intelligence and operate independently. Multiple leading AI companies are pursuing similar technology aimed at solving complex problems. An Amazon spokesman confirmed the decision after an inquiry. We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on. This is a fast-moving space, and we're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts," spokesman said. "That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future. We're committed to supporting impacted employees through their transition and we're grateful for their contributions," he added. The company did not disclose the number of employees affected by Wednesday's reduction. Amazon eliminated 16,000 positions across the company in January.

Amazon Refocuses Its AI Strategy on a New Leading-Edge Model

Amazon is reshaping its artificial intelligence strategy by gradually scaling back development of several in-house models to concentrate its resources on a new leading-edge model, according to Business Insider. The group has reportedly begun sidelining several models in the Nova lineup, including Premier, Omni, Reel and Canvas. The new effort is being led by researcher Pieter Abbeel and is expected to be unveiled at the annual "re:Invent" conference later this year. Amazon confirmed it is continually evolving its model portfolio based on customer needs, while saying it will continue support and investment in the Nova models currently available. The company also said it is investing in next-generation research on the most advanced models. The shift comes shortly after job cuts within its division focused on artificial general intelligence, as part of a strategy to prioritize projects deemed most important. Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, Amazon has not managed to make its AI models a household name and has focused more on infrastructure for enterprise customers. The group is not abandoning the Nova brand, however, and its future model could be marketed under that name. Since 2023, Amazon's general AI activities have undergone several reorganizations, including being placed under the responsibility of Peter DeSantis and the departure of several top executives.

Amazon Cuts Jobs in Artificial General Intelligence Unit

Amazon.com cut jobs in parts of its artificial general intelligence organization, the latest targeted workforce reduction at a major technology company as the industry continues to pour billions of dollars into artificial intelligence. The company didn't disclose how many employees were affected. "We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," an Amazon spokesperson said. "This is a fast-moving space, and we're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts." The spokesperson said the increased focus led to "some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization," while the company continues investing in AI initiatives it considers most important for customers. Amazon has been racing to expand its AI offerings, developing its Nova family of foundation models and investing heavily in generative AI services for customers through Amazon Web Services, while also integrating AI features across its retail and devices businesses. The move comes as large technology companies continue reshaping their workforces while increasing spending on AI infrastructure. Amazon announced broad corporate layoffs affecting about 16,000 employees in January as Chief Executive Andy Jassy pushed to streamline the company while accelerating AI investments. Amazon said affected U.S. employees will receive 90 days of pay and benefits, outplacement support, transitional healthcare benefits and will be eligible for severance payments. The company said it remains committed to investing in artificial intelligence despite the cuts, describing the layoffs as part of an effort to prioritize the initiatives it believes will have the greatest impact for customers.

Amazon lays off employees in AGI division while investing billions in AI: Report

Some employees working on AI model customisation and post-training were among those who lost their jobs, as per LinkedIn posts. Amazon has reportedly laid off employees from its artificial general intelligence (AGI) division even as the company continues to spend heavily to expand its AI business. It is still unclear how many employees were affected or which parts of the AGI division saw layoffs. The AGI division is responsible for developing Amazon's AI models and also includes teams working on custom AI chips and quantum computing. Some employees working on AI model customisation and post-training were among those who lost their jobs, as per LinkedIn posts. Explaining the decision, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, "This is a fast-moving space, and we're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts." "That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future." Also read: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, Z Fold 8, Z Flip 8, Watch Ultra 2 and Watch 9: India prices, pre-order benefits and more details Amazon has been reducing its workforce over the past few years after hiring heavily during the pandemic. Since October, the company has cut more than 30,000 jobs across different teams, reports CNBC. Smaller rounds of layoffs have also continued in recent months. Despite the layoffs, AI is one of Amazon's biggest priorities. The AGI division plays an important role in the company's efforts to compete with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. For those unaware, AGI refers to AI systems that can perform most tasks at a level similar to or better than humans. Amazon said its focus on AI has not changed. The spokesperson said that the company has been developing large AI models for years and "it remains one of the most important things we're working on." Also read: Google reportedly working on a new AI chip, here is how it may improve Gemini models Last month, Amazon's AGI lead Peter DeSantis admitted that the company's AI models "haven't been at the very frontier for the very largest, most demanding workloads." Amazon is expected to announce its second-quarter earnings next week. The company has already said it plans to spend about $200 billion this year on capital investments, with a major focus on expanding its AI infrastructure.