Amazon adjusts its AI strategy, phasing out most of its flagship models.

According to people familiar with the matter, Amazon is overhauling its artificial intelligence strategy, phasing out many in-house models, restructuring teams, and concentrating engineering resources on a new cutting-edge competitive initiative. The moves follow last week’s layoffs at Amazon’s General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) division and the shutdown of its AGI Lab — a research institute Amazon established in 2024 after poaching most of the team from AI startup Adept. This restructuring marks a refocus of Amazon’s AI strategy: instead of spreading resources across multiple text, image, and video models, the company is directing engineering talent and scarce computing resources to its highest-priority projects. Sources say Amazon has begun phasing out most of its in-house flagship Nova models, including the high-end Premier and Omni variants, the Reel video generation model, and the Canvas image generation model. The company is gradually shifting resources away from existing Nova models to a new cutting-edge model R&D program. Led by researcher Pieter Abbeel — who joined Amazon via the acquisition of AI robotics startup Covariant — this initiative, internally called "Edge Model Research" (abbreviated EMR), has become one of Amazon’s top priorities this year.