Amazon winds down most Nova AI models to back single frontier project
Amazon is abandoning most of its in-house artificial intelligence models to concentrate resources on a single flagship project, testing whether the cloud giant can compete in software rather than just hosting rivals.
Amazon is winding down the majority of its flagship Nova artificial intelligence models, including the high-end Premier and Omni systems, alongside the Reel video and Canvas image generators. The technology will remain supported for current clients but has been shifted into a maintenance-only phase.
This consolidation marks a strategic pivot from spreading resources across multiple formats to backing a single, larger initiative. The new effort, Frontier Model Research, is led by Pieter Abbeel, who joined the company following its 2024 acquisition of robotics startup Covariant.
The restructuring follows significant leadership changes, including the departure of former AI chief Rohit Prasad at the end of 2025 and AGI Lab founder David Luan in February. Peter DeSantis, who assumed control of the consolidated group in December, has deliberately concentrated scarce computing power and engineering talent on fewer, high-stakes bets.
Not all internal development is vanishing. Amazon will retain Nova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Sonic, the Nova Forge customisation service, and the Nova Act agent tool. However, the closure of the company’s 80-person AGI research site in San Francisco underscores the scale of the retreat from broad, in-house model development.
For European markets and global investors, this move highlights a growing reality in the artificial intelligence sector. Building competitive foundation models has proven prohibitively expensive, prompting even the deepest-pocketed technology giants to reconsider fragmented strategies in favour of focused, capital-efficient approaches.
Amazon’s true dominance lies in infrastructure rather than consumer-facing software. Its cloud division, AWS, currently holds compute commitments worth 138 billion dollars from OpenAI and over 100 billion dollars from Anthropic. Furthermore, its custom Trainium chips have evolved into a multibillion-dollar business that Jeff Bezos recently described as a fourth pillar of the company.
Company leadership dismisses the notion of a withdrawal from the sector. An Amazon spokesperson stated that artificial intelligence models remain one of the most important things the company is working on, adding that the business continually evolves its lineup around customer needs.
The ultimate test will arrive at the re:Invent conference this autumn, where a new flagship model is expected to debut. The critical question for developers and enterprise clients is whether Amazon can deliver a system compelling enough to choose over established alternatives like Claude, Gemini, or GPT, rather than merely supplying the infrastructure that powers them.
