Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Adept AI
The San Francisco lab founded in 2022 by former OpenAI and Google Brain research leader David Luan, with transformer co-authors Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, to build AI that takes actions in software rather than only producing text — two years before "computer-use agents" became a mainstream product. Adept raised ~$415m (reported), showed the ACT-1 agent demo (September 2022) and released the Persimmon and Fuyu models (2023), but could not fund frontier-scale training. On June 28, 2024 Amazon took a non-exclusive licence to its technology and hired Luan and most of the team, the second of the 2024 licence-and-hire deals after Microsoft–Inflection. The team built Amazon's Nova Act, but Luan left Amazon in February 2026 and Amazon closed the San Francisco AGI lab built around the Adept hires in ~July 2026 (reported, verify date). Adept itself continues as a small company.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2022, San Francisco, by David Luan (CEO), Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar; public launch with a $65m Series A on April 26, 2022 (reported)
- Headquarters
- San Francisco
- Ownership / structure
- Private. Investors include Greylock, Addition, General Catalyst, Spark Capital and strategic investors reported to include Microsoft, Nvidia, Atlassian Ventures and Workday Ventures (verify)
- Leadership (2026)
- Residual company led by Zach Brock as CEO after June 2024 (reported; verify 2026 leadership). Former: David Luan (CEO to June 2024; Amazon June 2024–February 2026); Vaswani and Parmar (left late 2022–2023 to co-found Essential AI, reported)
- AI products
- ACT-1 action-transformer demo (September 2022); Persimmon-8B open language model under Apache 2.0 (September 2023); Fuyu-8B open-weight multimodal model under a non-commercial licence (October 2023, reported, verify); Fuyu-Heavy (announced January 2024, not released); enterprise workflow agents (2023–24, reported)
- Scale
- Peak staff of a few dozen to ~100 (reported, verify); ~20 staff remained after the Amazon deal (Amazon, reported); revenue never disclosed
- Capital raised
- ~$65m Series A (April 2022); $350m Series B co-led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital (March 14, 2023), valuation reported ~$1bn or more (verify); ~$415m in total (reported); Amazon licence fee not disclosed
- Key partnerships
- Amazon (non-exclusive licence of agent technology, multimodal models and some datasets, June 2024); Hugging Face (open-model distribution, 2023)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- The founding action-transformer bet (2022); ACT-1 and the transformer authors' exit (2022–23, failure); the $350m Series B (2023); Persimmon and Fuyu open models (2023–24); sale talks and the enterprise-agent pivot (2024, failure); the Amazon licence-and-hire (2024); the FTC inquiry (2024); Luan's exit and the closure of Amazon's AGI lab (2026, failure of the acquired team's lab)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2022
ACT 1 Demo and the Transformer Authors Exit
Model release (demo); co-founder departure (failure)
2022
Founding and the Action Transformer Bet
Founding / funding round
2023
350m Series B
Funding round
2023
Persimmon and Fuyu Open Models
Model release (open weights and a closed flagship)
2024
Amazon Licence and Hire
Licence-and-hire
2024
FTC Inquiry into the Amazon Deal
Regulatory action (informal inquiry)
2024
Sale Talks and the Enterprise Agent Pivot
Pivot / strategic review (failure to stay independent)
2026
Luan Exit and Amazon AGI Lab Closure
Shutdown (of the acquirer's lab built on the licence-and-hire); leadership departure