Amazon Hires Founders of This AI Robotics Startup: Here’s How It Will Improve the Company’s Deliveries

Amazon has reached a commercial agreement with the founders and almost a quarter of its employees at a robotics startup, Covariant. The e-commerce major also secured a non-exclusive license to use the company’s robotic foundation models. The acquisition underscores Amazon’s continued investment in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

What Amazon Said About the New Hire

The company announced in a blog post that Covariant founders — Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan — will now become part of Amazon. The company writes: “Covariant is a Bay Area company that creates advanced AI models that enable robots to see, reason about, and act on the world around them, supporting a wide range of warehouse automation tasks. We applaud the Covariant team for their iterative, customer-centric approach to developing technologies that solve the most difficult challenges in warehouse automation, as well as their deep understanding of the process from start to finish. Through our agreement, Amazon receives a non-exclusive license to Covariant’s robotic foundation models. Covariant’s models will help develop new ways to generalize how our robotic systems learn and provide dynamic capabilities for automation to make our operations safer and deliver better for our customers. As part of this effort, Amazon plans to expand its AI and robotics team in the Bay Area to leverage world-class talent and advance the latest advances in automation.”

What will happen to Covariant?

Covariant, meanwhile, will continue to operate under the leadership of Ted Stinson and Tianhao Zhang, the startup said in a separate blog post. Stinson — who was the startup’s COO — will now take on the role of CEO.
The company added that it still “dedicated to bringing Covariant Brain to production environments across a broad range of global industries including apparel, health and beauty, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical.”

Amazon previous similar jobs

Amazon’s acquisition of Covariant’s founders and technology follows a similar path to its previous acquisition of Adept. By hiring key personnel and licensing the technology, Amazon can gain access to valuable talent and innovation without resorting to a full-blown acquisition that could attract antitrust scrutiny. This strategy, often referred to as a “reverse acquisition” (as dubbed by The Verge), allows tech giants to expand their capabilities while avoiding potential regulatory hurdles.