Amazon, the world's largest cloud company, is set to restructure its AI division by merging its artificial intelligence (AI) model development team with its in-house AI chip development team.
On December 17 (local time), Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, announced in an internal notice that the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team would be integrated with the chip development team.
Until now, Amazon's AGI team has developed its own large language model (LLM) called "Nova," while the chip development team has focused on proprietary AI chips such as "Trainium." By merging the two teams, Amazon aims to optimize both "Nova" and "Trainium," which have previously been developed separately, and prepare to actively enter the enterprise AI model market.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has so far mainly distributed AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. With this move, Amazon is seeking to transform itself from a distributor into a developer that supplies its own AI models.
The integrated team will be led by Peter DeSantis, Vice President who has overseen the infrastructure division at AWS. The organization under DeSantis will also include the quantum computing team. This appears to be part of a long-term strategy to secure AGI competitiveness through research into next-generation computing capabilities that surpass current computational limits.
CEO Jassy explained the purpose of the reorganization by stating, "When Amazon's business grows and gains momentum, we look at where we can maximize long-term potential. I believe some of the new technologies we have developed are at such an inflection point." He added, "With the Nova 2 model just launched and our custom semiconductors experiencing rapid growth, optimization across models, chips, cloud, and infrastructure will provide significant advantages. I want Peter to be able to focus his energy and leadership in this area."
Meanwhile, Rohit Prasad, Vice President who has led the AGI team and spearheaded the development of "Nova" as well as previously leading the Alexa project, will leave the company at the end of the year. Instead, Peter Abbeel, a robotics expert and AI researcher, will head the Frontier Model Research team within the AGI division.
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