When Amazon hired the founders of AI startup Adept final 12 months, it was one of many first examples of what turned generally known as a reverse acquihire — a deal the place a big firm hires key startup staff members and licenses its know-how, moderately than buying the startup outright.

Adept’s co-founder and former CEO David Luan subsequently turned the head of Amazon’s new AGI Lab, and whereas Luan’s recent interview with The Verge is ostensibly targeted on Amazon’s imaginative and prescient for AI brokers, reporter Alex Heath additionally requested him about the reverse acquihire trend.

Luan replied that hopes to be “remembered extra as being an AI analysis innovator moderately than a deal construction innovator,” — however from his perspective, it’s “completely rational” for corporations like Amazon to “put collectively important mass on each expertise and compute proper now.”

As for why he was keen to go away his startup for Amazon, Luan stated he wasn’t excited by turning Adept right into a “an enterprise firm that solely sells small fashions,” as a result of he needed to unravel “the 4 essential remaining analysis issues left to AGI.”

“Each single one among them goes to require two-digit billion-dollar clusters to go run it,” he stated. “How else am I […] going to have the chance to go do this?”