On February 25, according to CNBC, David Luan, the head of Amazon’s General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) laboratory and a Chinese executive, announced his resignation on Tuesday after less than two years in the position. He previously joined Amazon through its talent acquisition of its startup Adept.
David Luan
David Luan announced on LinkedIn on Tuesday that he would be leaving his post this weekend "to do something new."
David Luan’s post announcing his resignation
Amazon appointed David Luan to head its newly established AGI Lab in San Francisco in December 2024. The lab focuses on "long-term research projects," including developing "practical AI agents." Last year, the team released the Nova Act agent, an extension of Amazon's Nova model. Amazon hopes to compete with leading AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini.
"Amazon still has incredible work to do, and I also have the opportunity to take on work in more areas. But since AGI is close at hand, I decided to invest 100% of my time in giving AI systems new capabilities." David Luan said.
Before David Luan announced his departure, Amazon announced a major reorganization of its AGI department at the end of last year, placing it under Peter DeSantis, a 27-year veteran of the company and senior vice president of the cloud business.
Amazon hired David Luan and several other executives from Adept in June 2024. At the same time, Amazon also obtained technology licenses from Adept, including some of its AI models and data sets. The specific amount of the transaction has not been disclosed.