Amazon announced Friday night that it had hired Covariant founders Peter Abeel, Peter Chen and Rocky Duan, as well as “approximately a quarter” of the startup's employees, and also signed a non-exclusive license to use Covariant's robotic foundation model.
Earlier this year, Chen told TechCrunch that Covariant is building “large-scale language models for robotics. In other words, the company is creating AI models for robots, with an initial focus on robotic arms that perform common warehouse tasks like bin picking.
“We are conducting fundamental research with the brightest minds and combining our vast domain expertise to pioneer new ways for AI and robotics to empower our workforce,” Joseph Quinlivan, vice president of Amazon Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics, said in a statement.[Embedding] Incorporating Covariant's AI technology into our existing robot fleet will improve robot performance and create real value for our customers.”
The deal appears similar to Amazon's June deal to hire the founder of AI startup Adept, which also gave Amazon access to new talent and technology without outright buying an existing startup.
At the time, The Verge described the approach as a “reverse acquisition hire,” a technique in which tech giants facing antitrust investigations can use employment or licensing agreements to hide acquisitions, rather than the other way around.
Covariant, meanwhile, will continue to operate under the leadership of Ted Stinson and Tianhao Zhang, with Stinson, who was the startup's COO, taking on the role of CEO, the company said in a statement. The company added that it “remains focused on delivering Covariant Brain to manufacturing environments across a broad range of global industries, including apparel, health and beauty, food and pharmaceuticals.”