The head of Amazon's artificial intelligence (AI) lab who has led the development of autonomous agents is leaving the company. He is resigning less than two years after joining through Amazon's acquisition of Adept, the startup he founded.
According to major foreign media on the 24th (local time), David Luan, head of Amazon's AI lab, said via LinkedIn that he will leave the company this weekend and start something new.
In Dec. 2024, Amazon brought in Luan to lead a newly established AGI lab in San Francisco. The lab focuses on long-term research investment, including developing AI agents. Last year, it launched the Nova Act agent, an expansion of Amazon's Nova model. Amazon expects the agent to compete with major AI models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini.
Luan said, "There is still a lot to do at Amazon, and there were opportunities to take on more areas," adding, "but with artificial general intelligence (AGI) now right around the corner, I decided to devote all my time to teaching AI systems completely new capabilities." AGI refers to artificial intelligence that can perform on par with or better than humans in most tasks.
Luan, who worked as an engineering leader at OpenAI, joined the company in 2024 when key executives from Adept AI Labs, the startup he co-founded, moved to Amazon. Late last year, Amazon announced a sweeping reorganization of its AGI division. Under the changes, the AGI division was placed under the leadership of Peter DeSantis, a 27-year Amazon veteran and senior vice president of the cloud division.