Amazon introduced Friday night that it has hired Covariant’s founders — Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan — together with “a few quarter” of the startup’s staff. It’s additionally signed a non-exclusive license to make use of Covariant’s robotic basis fashions.
Earlier this yr, Chen told TheTrendyType that Covariant is constructing “a big language mannequin, however for robotic language.” In different phrases, it’s creating AI fashions for robots, with an preliminary concentrate on robotic arms performing frequent warehouse duties like bin selecting.
“With a number of the smartest minds, we’ll advance elementary analysis, marrying our wealthy experience to unlock new methods for AI and robots to help our operations staff,” mentioned Joseph Quinlivan, Vice President of Amazon Achievement Applied sciences & Robotics, in an announcement. “[Embedding] Covariant’s AI expertise into our present robotic fleet will make them extra performant and create actual world worth for our clients.”
The deal sounds much like Amazon’s hiring of the founders of AI startup Adept again in June — one other deal that gave Amazon entry to new expertise and expertise with out having to completely purchase an present startup.
On the time, The Verge described this approach as a “reverse acquihire,” the place tech giants going through antitrust scrutiny can use hiring and licensing offers to disguise their acquisitions, quite than the opposite manner round.
Covariant, in the meantime, said it will continue operating underneath the management of Ted Stinson and Tianhao Zhang, with Stinson — who’d been the startup’s COO — now getting into the CEO position. The corporate added that it stays “devoted to delivering the Covariant Mind into manufacturing environments throughout a broad set of worldwide industries, together with attire, well being and sweetness, grocery, and prescribed drugs.”
