Amazon announced Friday evening that it has hired Covariant’s founders — Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan — along with “about a quarter” of the startup’s employees. It’s also signed a non-exclusive license to use Covariant’s robotic foundation models.
Earlier this year, Chen told TechCrunch that Covariant is building “a large language model, but for robot language.” In other words, it’s creating AI models for robots, with an initial focus on robotic arms performing common warehouse tasks like bin picking.
“With some of the smartest minds, we will advance fundamental research, marrying our rich expertise to unlock new ways for AI and robots to assist our operations employees,” said Joseph Quinlivan, vice president of Amazon Fulfillment Technologies & Robotics, in a statement. “[Embedding] Covariant’s AI technology into our existing robot fleet will make them more performant and create real-world value for our customers.”
The deal sounds similar to Amazon’s hiring of the founders of AI startup Adept back in June — another deal that gave Amazon access to new talent and technology without having to fully acquire an existing startup.
At the time, The Verge described this approach as a “reverse acquihire,” where tech giants facing antitrust scrutiny can use hiring and licensing deals to disguise their acquisitions, rather than the other way around.
Covariant, meanwhile, said it will continue operating under the leadership of Ted Stinson and Tianhao Zhang, with Stinson — who’d been the startup’s COO — now stepping into the CEO role. The company added that it remains “dedicated to delivering the Covariant Brain into production environments across a broad set of global industries, including apparel, health and beauty, grocery, and pharmaceuticals.”
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