On Friday night, Amazon announced that it has hired Covariant's three founders — Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan — as well as "about a quarter" of the startup's employees. It has also signed a non-exclusive license to use Covariant's robotic foundation models.

In an early-year TechCrunch conversation, Chen explained how Covariant was building "a large language model, but for robot language." That's to say, it's developing AI models with the aim of usefulness for robots, based in supply-chaining warehouse work, like typical bin picks of various robotic arms.

As stated by Joseph Quinlivan, vice president of Amazon Fulfillment Technologies & Robotics, "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." "By embedding Covariant's AI technology into our existing robot fleet, it will make them more performant and create real-world value for customers.

This deal also bears some similarities with the Adept founders who, in June, Amazon hired and gave it access to new talent and technology without even partially acquiring an existing startup.

At the time, The Verge referred to this as a "reverse acquihire," by which tech giants under antitrust scrutiny can use hiring and licensing deals to disguise acquisitions where it might prefer them.

Meanwhile, Covariant said it will continue to operate under the leadership of Ted Stinson and Tianhao Zhang, with Stinson — who'd been the startup's COO — stepping into the CEO role. The company said it remains "dedicated to delivering the Covariant Brain into production environments across a broad set of global industries, including apparel, health and beauty, grocery, and pharmaceuticals."