The head of Amazon’s artificial general intelligence lab, David Luan, is leaving the company less than two years after joining through the acqui-hire of his startup Adept, marking another shift in the tech giant’s evolving AI strategy.
Luan announced his departure in a LinkedIn post, saying he would exit at the end of the week “to cook up something new.” He added that while there were broader opportunities available to him within Amazon, he chose to focus entirely on advancing AI systems’ capabilities, writing that “with AGI so close,” he wanted to dedicate “100% of my time on teaching AI systems brand new capabilities.”
Amazon recruited Luan in June 2024 as part of a deal to hire key executives and license technology from Adept, a startup building AI agents designed to execute complex tasks across software tools. The financial terms were not disclosed. In December 2024, Amazon formally appointed Luan to lead its newly established AGI lab in San Francisco, which was tasked with pursuing long-term research initiatives, including the development of “useful AI agents.”
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 19 (Feb 9 – May 2, 2026).
Register for Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Register for Tekedia AI Lab.
The lab released Nova Act, an agentic extension of Amazon’s Nova foundation models, positioning it as a competitor to leading AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini. The product launch signaled Amazon’s intent to move beyond cloud infrastructure dominance and into the frontier-model and AI agent race.
Strategic reshuffle inside Amazon
Luan’s departure follows a significant internal reorganization of Amazon’s AGI division late last year. The company placed the unit under Peter DeSantis, a 27-year Amazon veteran and senior vice president in its cloud business, Amazon Web Services. The move consolidated AI research leadership more directly under the company’s cloud infrastructure arm, reinforcing AWS’s central role in Amazon’s AI ambitions.
The timing raises questions about how Amazon is balancing long-horizon AGI research with near-term commercialization through AWS. While the AGI lab was framed as pursuing foundational breakthroughs, Amazon’s broader AI strategy has emphasized embedding generative AI capabilities into cloud services, enterprise tooling, and consumer products.
Artificial general intelligence — typically defined as AI capable of performing at or above human level across most cognitive tasks — remains an aspirational milestone across the industry. Although Luan’s post suggested he believes AGI is near, most researchers describe the path toward general-purpose human-level systems as uncertain and technically unresolved.
Regulatory scrutiny of acqui-hires
The Adept deal is part of a broader pattern in which major technology companies recruit entire AI teams while licensing startup intellectual property rather than acquiring the companies outright. These arrangements, often called “acqui-hires,” have drawn increasing regulatory attention.
In January, Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said the agency would review AI acqui-hire transactions to assess whether companies are attempting to sidestep traditional merger review processes. The FTC opened a probe in 2024 into Amazon’s hiring of Adept employees.
Lawmakers, including Elizabeth Warren, have also raised concerns that such structures could consolidate AI talent and capabilities within a handful of dominant firms without triggering antitrust scrutiny.
For Amazon, the regulatory dimension adds complexity to an already competitive landscape. Rivals are aggressively recruiting AI researchers and scaling model development. OpenAI maintains a deep partnership with Microsoft, while Anthropic has secured multibillion-dollar backing from Amazon and Google.
Talent churn in the AI race
Luan’s exit underscores the fluid nature of leadership in the AI sector. Founders and researchers frequently cycle between startups and large technology firms as compensation structures, autonomy, compute access, and strategic direction shift.
The departure also highlights the challenge of integrating entrepreneurial AI teams into large corporate environments. Startups often operate with research-first cultures and rapid iteration cycles, while established companies must align projects with broader revenue, compliance, and governance frameworks.
Amazon has not publicly named a successor to Luan. With AGI research now under DeSantis’s oversight, the company appears to be tightening alignment between advanced AI development and its cloud infrastructure platform.
Amazon has historically excelled at scaling infrastructure businesses, from e-commerce logistics to cloud computing. Its position in the AI infrastructure through AWS gives it distribution and compute advantages. However, in the race for leading foundation models and agentic systems, it competes against firms whose primary identity is AI research.
Amazon’s AGI initiative evolving into a standalone frontier research engine or becoming increasingly integrated into AWS’s product roadmap may shape its competitive posture over the next several years.
Luan’s statement suggests he intends to remain focused on advancing AI capabilities outside Amazon’s structure. His next move will be closely watched in a sector where talent concentration and research breakthroughs can shift competitive dynamics quickly.