Amazon overhauls Nova AI models, bets on outside hire to rebuild from scratch

Amazon, the world's largest cloud computing company, is overhauling its strategy for its in-house AI models, scrapping the existing Nova development organization and redirecting resources toward a new initiative.

Business Insider reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources, that Amazon has disbanded its existing Nova development team and is concentrating resources on a "Frontier Model Research" (FMR) program led by Vice President Peter Abeel, an outside hire.

Amazon has begun phasing out several models developed under the Nova lineup, including the high-performance "Premier" and "Omni" models, the video model "Reel" and the image model "Canvas."

Abeel, who heads the new AI model development effort, is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-founder of Covariant, a robotics AI startup. He joined Amazon when the company acquired Covariant in 2024.

The FMR team under Abeel is developing a new foundation model to be unveiled at Amazon's annual technology conference "re:Invent" later this year. The project has become the company's top internal priority.

In effect, Amazon is not retiring the Nova models outright but replacing them by building an entirely new model from the ground up.

Reuters recently reported that Amazon had laid off some employees in its artificial general intelligence division. An Amazon spokesperson said, "AI model development remains one of the most important initiatives we are pursuing."

Amazon is retaining some lighter Nova models, including "Nova2 Sonic" and "Nova2 Lite," as well as the model-building service "Nova Forge" and the AI agent technology "Nova Act." The company has also left open the possibility that the newly developed model could carry on the "Nova" brand name.

Amazon's sweeping model overhaul draws comparisons to the strategy Meta adopted last year. After its open-source model "Llama" fell short of expectations, Meta brought in Alexander Wang, founder of Scale AI, to lead its Meta Superintelligence Labs and released a new AI model called "Muse."