Amazon winds down flagship Nova models and bets on a new frontier research team

Amazon is reportedly winding down most of its flagship Nova models and redirecting resources toward a new frontier research team. Business Insider reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Amazon has begun deprecating the high-end Premier and Omni models, the Reel video-generation model and the Canvas image-generation model.

It is a dramatic reversal for a model family that Amazon first unveiled in December 2024. Just last year, according to Business Insider, AWS used its re:Invent conference to present Nova Omni 2 as its flagship multimodal reasoning model. Now Amazon is pulling back on several flagship Nova models, and the spotlight is moving to a different team.

What is being shelved

Futurism reports that Amazon's text, video and image Nova models have been placed in a state of "keep the lights on," meaning they are technically still supported but receive only the bare minimum resources. The same report says Amazon is narrowing its focus to "highest priority" goals and reorganizing its development teams.

Not everything is going. Business Insider says the remaining Nova portfolio includes the Nova 2 Sonic and Nova 2 Lite foundation models, Nova Forge (a service for building and customizing models) and Nova Act, Amazon's AI agent technology.

An Amazon spokesperson gave Business Insider a statement: "AI models remain one of the most important things we're working on, and that hasn't changed." The spokesperson added that Amazon continually evolves its model lineup based on what customers need and always provides "clear guidance and migration paths as models advance."

The new bet: Frontier Model Research

The center of the story is a program known internally as Frontier Model Research, or FMR. Business Insider says it has become a top priority this year, and that Amazon is building a new flagship foundation model under it, expected to debut at this year's re:Invent, which typically happens in the fall.

Futurism reports that labor and computing power are being diverted to a single frontier-model effort led by Pieter Abbeel, director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab. His robotics company Covariant was absorbed by Amazon in 2024, according to the same report.

The coverage gives no benchmark, parameter count or budget for the new model. It also does not say whether it will carry the Nova name. That question is still open.

A reorganization with a paper trail

This did not come out of nowhere. Business Insider reports that Amazon created its AGI organization in 2023 to build foundation models and other technologies for products across the company. Rohit Prasad, a longtime Alexa executive, led it until he departed in December 2025. That same month Amazon placed the unit under senior vice president Peter DeSantis, combining it with its silicon development and quantum computing organizations.

The AGI group also ran differently from the rest of Amazon. Employees told Business Insider it kept separate leveling and compensation systems to compete harder for AI talent.

Then there is AGI Lab. Amazon established it in 2024 after hiring the cofounders of the startup Adept and licensing its technology. David Luan, an Adept cofounder, led it until he left in February, and Business Insider says Amazon shut the lab down in July as part of the latest reorganization.

Separately, Futurism reports that Amazon closed an 80-person San Francisco office focused on artificial general intelligence research a week before news of the strategic shift. The coverage does not say whether that office and AGI Lab are the same operation. Futurism also notes Amazon canceled an AI-generated animated series after relentless derision, which is not a model story but is not a great look either.

Failure or focus?

The outlets disagree on how to read it. Futurism frames the restructuring as Amazon gutting its AI division after sustained failure, and it describes the power-hungry large language models as a bust. Business Insider and The Decoder frame the move as a concentration on high-end frontier development, with several Nova-branded products still sold and maintained.

The sourcing is a little tangled too. Futurism says Bloomberg broke the report, Business Insider labels the story an exclusive by Eugene Kim, and The Decoder credits Business Insider. Business Insider attributes the model deprecations to people familiar with the matter; Amazon's statement does not confirm those specifics.

Then there is the money angle. The Decoder notes that Amazon is also one of the biggest backers of Anthropic and OpenAI, where investments could top $100 billion. The report does not detail what the OpenAI arrangement is. But that reported backing raises an obvious strategic question: how does Amazon's own frontier effort fit alongside its investments in other labs?

What to watch

• The re:Invent reveal. The new flagship is expected this fall. Whether it arrives with a benchmark table, a price and a name will say a lot.
• Customer migration. Nothing in the coverage spells out the schedule or support for companies built on Premier, Omni, Reel and Canvas.
• The human cost. The reports do not give a total number of employees affected across the AGI organization beyond the 80-person San Francisco site.
• The Abbeel mandate. Pieter Abbeel now leads the frontier-model effort. Amazon has put a very large bet on one team.

Amazon says models remain a top priority. The next few weeks will show how much of the old lineup that priority actually covers.