Amazon hires Covariant founders and employees and bags non-exclusive license to robotic foundation models

Amazon has hired Covariant’s founders, Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan, and is licensing the company’s robotic foundation models.

In an online post, Amazon says: “Covariant is a Bay Area-based company that builds advanced AI models that enable robots to see, reason, and act on the world around them, supporting a number of different warehouse automation tasks.”

“What we admire about the Covariant team is their iterative and customer focused approach to developing technologies that solve the toughest challenges in warehouse automation and their deep understanding of that end-to-end process.”

“Through our agreement, Amazon is receiving a non-exclusive license to Covariant’s robotic foundation models. Its models will help drive new ways to generalise how our robotic systems learn and provide dynamic opportunities for how we use automation to make our operations safer and better deliver for customers.”

“As part of this effort, Amazon plans to grow its AI and robotics team in the Bay Area to tap into world class talent and advance the latest in automation.”

Abbeel, Chen, Duan, and a group of research scientists and engineers (around a quarter of Covariant’s current employees) will join Amazon’s Fulfilment Technologies & Robotics Team to help drive the development and implementation of Covariant’s technology within Amazon’s operations and continue to develop innovative AI solutions.

Covariant will continue to serve its customers and build on its technology that supports fulfilment and distribution centre automation.

“We’re excited to welcome some of Covariant’s talented team to Amazon and look forward to building on this technology with them to deliver the next generation of robotics that will drive forward the state-of-the-art in automation,” says Joseph Quinlivan, Vice President, Amazon Fulfilment 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. Imbedding Covariant’s AI technology into our existing robot fleet will make them more performant and create real world value for our customers.”

2024 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

Fulfilment and distribution centre automation is a key focus area for the sixth edition of the RTIH Innovation Awards, which is now open for entries.

The awards, sponsored by CADS, 3D Cloud, Retail Technology Show 2025, and Business France, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

It’s free to enter and you can do so across multiple categories.

Key 2024 dates

Friday, 25th October: Award entry deadline 

Tuesday, 29th October: 2024 shortlist revealed

30th October-6th November: Judging days

Thursday, 21st November: Winners announced at the 2024 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony, to be held at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London.