Amazon Poaches Adept's Founders and Licenses Its Technology — a "Reverse Acquihire" That Shook the Industry

It emerged that Amazon had hired core members of the AI agent startup Adept, including co-founder and CEO David Luan, while simultaneously taking a non-exclusive license to Adept’s technology. Rather than acquiring the company itself, this unusual deal structure — obtaining only talent and a technology license — drew widespread attention as a “reverse acquihire.”

Details

• Talent who moved to Amazon: CEO David Luan, along with co-founders Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen, and Kelsey Szot, plus several other staff members
• Deal structure: Amazon turned down acquisition talks with Meta and Microsoft, its previous exclusive negotiating partners, and instead of buying the Adept entity itself, took only a non-exclusive technology license and hired the talent. Reports indicate the payment to Adept was far from large — roughly equivalent to reimbursing its investors (including Greylock and General Catalyst, who had invested a combined $415 million)
• Adept’s explanation: The company said continuing to develop its own foundation model would require devoting enormous effort to fundraising, and that this decision let it focus on “realizing the vision of agents”
• The company that remained: According to local reports, roughly 25% of staff (about 75 people) were laid off around this time. Zach Brock, previously head of engineering, was promoted to CEO, and Adept continued to exist as a company
• Background: Following the earlier departures of Vaswani and Parmar, even the CEO’s departure was reported as symbolizing the tough funding and competitive environment facing Adept in the crowded field of proprietary foundation model development

What happened next

Adept did not disappear, but the focus of its business shifted significantly. Under new CEO Zach Brock, the company doubled down on “solutions for realizing agentic AI,” and in August 2024 published an article introducing its in-house “Adept Workflow Language.” However, no major new developments have been confirmed since then, and as of this outlet’s research (July 2026), no notable new announcements from the company have surfaced.