Amazon AGI Labs chief defends his reverse acquihire

Group 1 - Amazon's hiring of Adept's founders represents a trend known as reverse acquihires, where large companies hire key startup team members and license their technology instead of outright acquisitions [1] - David Luan, co-founder of Adept, is now leading Amazon's new AGI Lab, indicating a strategic move towards enhancing Amazon's capabilities in AI [2] - Luan expressed a desire to be remembered as an AI research innovator rather than a deal structure innovator, highlighting the importance of talent and computational resources in advancing AI research [3] Group 2 - Luan's motivation for joining Amazon was to tackle significant research challenges in AGI, which he believes require substantial financial and computational investment [3] - He emphasized that solving the remaining crucial research problems in AGI necessitates "two-digit billion-dollar clusters," underscoring the scale of resources needed for such advancements [3]