Amazon Adjusts AI Product Line, Downgrades Nova Flagship Models and Cuts AGI Research Unit
Amazon has made significant adjustments to its AI product line, downgrading several Nova flagship models including Nova Premier, Nova Omni, Reel, and Canvas to maintenance status. The company also reduced staff in its AGI unit and closed the AGI Lab, established less than two years ago. The AGI unit, formerly led by Rohit Prasad who left in late 2025, is now under senior vice president Peter DeSantis. Resources are being concentrated on a few competitive frontier models led by Pieter Abbeel.
Amazon has made major adjustments to its artificial intelligence product line, downgrading several Nova series flagship models to maintenance status. The affected models include Nova Premier, Nova Omni, video generation model Reel, and image generation model Canvas. Among them, Nova Omni was launched at the AWS re:Invent conference in 2025 and has exited the core research and development sequence in less than a year. Products in maintenance status will continue to support existing customers but will no longer receive major research and development resources. An Amazon spokesperson said the company always supports AI models in production environments, customers still rely on these services, and the company will continue to adjust its model portfolio based on customer needs and provide clear migration paths for customers.
At the same time, Amazon has reduced staff in its general artificial intelligence (AGI) unit and closed the AGI Lab, a research institution established less than two years ago. The AGI unit was previously led by Rohit Prasad, who left the company at the end of 2025, and AGI Lab co-founder David Luan left the company in February 2026. The AGI unit has now been placed under the management of senior vice president Peter DeSantis, integrated with chip research and quantum computing operations. DeSantis is driving a more focused development strategy, concentrating engineering talent and computing power on a few of the most competitive frontier models.
Amazon has fully shifted its AI resources toward its internal frontier model research team, led by Pieter Abbeel, who joined after Amazon acquired AI robotics startup Covariant. Currently, Nova 2 Sonic, Nova 2 Lite, model development platform Nova Forge, and AI agent product Nova Act will continue to receive maintenance support. However, multiple employees said the company has hardly disclosed future development plans for the Nova series, and there is considerable internal uncertainty about the product roadmap.
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