"E-commerce giant Amazon announced on August 30 that it had minted a deal with robotics company Covariant, both on talent and on product, to make its robotics and automation capabilities stronger.
Covariant creates robotics foundation models, which allow full control over robots’ activities; the best ones allow control over multiple types of robots and different functions.
As part of the deal, Amazon will hire Pieter Abbeel, Covariant’s co-founder, president and chief scientist; Rocky Duan, co-founder and chief technology officer of the startup and Peter Chen, the robotics’ company’s co-founder and CEO. Amazon will also bring over about 25 percent of Covariant’s existing staff as part of its plan to grow its Bay Area robotics team.
Joseph Quinlivan, Vice President, Amazon fulfillment technologies & robotics, said he’s excited about the new talent and believes their expertise can take the giant even further.
“With some of the smartest minds, we will advance fundamental research, marrying our rich expertise to unlock new ways for AI and robots to assist our operations employees. Embedding Covariant’s AI technology into our existing robot fleet will make them more performant and create real world value for our customers,” Quinlivan said in a statement.
The company will also gain access to “a non-exclusive license to Covariant’s robotic foundation models,” according to its blog.
“Covariant’s models will help drive new ways to generalize how our robotic systems learn and provide dynamic opportunities for how we use automation to make our operations safer and better deliver for customers,” the company wrote in the blog.
Amazon already has over 750,000 robots working in its facilities and warehouses alongside human employees; by partnering with Covariant, the goalpost moves further in terms of what Amazon can build and do with robotics." [1]
1. Byte-Sized AI: Amazon Teams With Covariant on Robotics. Hall, Meghan. Sourcing Journal (Online); New York (Sep 6, 2024).
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