Amazon closes San Francisco AGI Lab and scales back Nova AI models

Amazon is restructuring its in-house AI work: it has closed its San Francisco AGI Lab and is scaling back development of several Nova models, moving people and computing power to a single new flagship model effort. The models being wound down include Nova Premier, Nova Omni, the video model Nova Reel and the image model Nova Canvas, while Nova Act, Nova Forge and some lighter Nova models stay.

The restructuring was first reported in July and has raised questions about how Amazon competes with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic on advanced AI systems. Amazon has confirmed the lab closure and job cuts in its artificial general intelligence organisation, and says development of its own models continues. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to AI with human-level intelligence and reasoning skills.

What Amazon is cutting, and what it is keeping

According to reports, Amazon has begun phasing out several Nova models that it built for different AI tasks. News9live describes them as follows:

• Nova Premier: a high-end model for complex tasks.
• Nova Omni: a model built to work with different types of information.
• Nova Reel: Amazon’s video-generation model.
• Nova Canvas: an image-generation model.

Futurism, citing Amazon insiders who spoke to Bloomberg, says the affected models, including the text-based Nova models and the video and image models, have been placed in a “keep the lights on” state. That means they are technically still supported but receive only the minimum resources needed to keep them running. Reuters reported that Amazon is reducing active development of these models and that some existing systems will keep limited support for customers already using them, according to News9live.

The Herald Business, citing a Business Insider report, says Amazon is keeping some lighter models, naming Nova2 Sonic and Nova2 Lite, along with the model-building service Nova Forge and the agent technology Nova Act. Nova Act remains available through AWS, and Nova Forge, which lets businesses customise AI models, continues to receive support.

Product	What it does	Reported status
Nova Premier	High-end model for complex tasks	Being phased out
Nova Omni	Works with different types of information	Being phased out
Nova Reel	Video generation	Being phased out
Nova Canvas	Image generation	Being phased out
Nova2 Lite	Lighter model	Retained
Nova2 Sonic	Lighter model	Retained
Nova Forge	Customise AI models for businesses	Still supported
Nova Act	AI agent technology	Still available through AWS

Amazon has not announced the shutdown of the entire Nova family. The Herald Business frames the move as replacement rather than retirement: Amazon is building an entirely new model from the ground up, and has left open the possibility that it carries the Nova name.

Why Amazon closed its San Francisco AGI Lab

Amazon closed the San Francisco AGI Lab in July following layoffs. The lab worked on AI agents, including technology that could carry out tasks through web browsers. Futurism, citing Bloomberg, describes it as an 80-person site focused on research toward artificial general intelligence, and says it closed about a week before the news of the wider Nova pullback broke in late July.

The closure does not mean the end of Amazon’s AGI organisation. That broader organisation remains active, even as individual projects and teams face cuts. Reuters reported that Amazon laid off some employees in its AGI division, according to The Herald Business.

How the reporting fits together

The picture comes from several outlets, each citing different reporting. News9live attributes the shift of staff and computing to The Information and the model cutbacks to Reuters. Futurism’s account is based on Bloomberg, and The Herald Business relies on Business Insider, which cited multiple sources. Their descriptions differ in detail. Business Insider says the existing Nova development team was disbanded. Bloomberg, via Futurism, describes most models being put “on ice”. Amazon itself has confirmed only the lab closure and the job cuts, not a list of retired models.

Frontier Model Research and Pieter Abbeel’s new flagship model

The resources taken from Nova are going to a single project. Amazon is prioritising its Frontier Model Research initiative, led by AI researcher Pieter Abbeel. The Herald Business calls the program by its abbreviation, FMR, and reports that it has become the company’s top internal priority. That outlet spells his name “Peter Abeel”; News9live and Futurism use “Pieter Abbeel”.

Abbeel is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-founder of Covariant, a robotics AI startup. He joined Amazon when it acquired Covariant in 2024. Futurism notes that he directs the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and that Covariant’s founders were working on AI models for robots when he joined, which it says fits Amazon’s push to automate.

His team is developing a new foundation model, a large general-purpose model that other products build on. The Herald Business reports it is to be unveiled at re:Invent, Amazon’s annual technology conference, later this year. News9live is more cautious: reports suggest the model could appear at re:Invent, but the company has not confirmed a launch date.

What Amazon says, and what it does not

Amazon’s public statements stress continuity. An Amazon spokesperson told Reuters, according to News9live:

“We’re continuing to invest in and support the Nova models our customers rely on today.”

That statement appears in News9live’s report. In The Herald Business’s report, which was produced with the help of AI translation from Korean, an Amazon spokesperson is quoted as saying that “AI model development remains one of the most important initiatives we are pursuing”.

Neither statement names which models will stay fully maintained, how long limited support will last, or what happens to customers on the models being phased out. No source gives a retirement schedule.

Why Amazon is narrowing its AI bets

News9live reads the restructuring as Amazon concentrating research spending and computing on fewer projects, noting that Nova models have struggled to attract the same attention as systems from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Futurism is blunter, saying Amazon wants to focus on “highest priority” goals after its large language models “turned out to be a bust”. That is the outlet’s characterisation, not Amazon’s.

The Herald Business compares the move to Meta’s approach: after its open-source Llama models fell short of expectations, Meta brought in Scale AI founder Alexander Wang to lead Meta Superintelligence Labs and released a new model called Muse.

The wider cost-cutting backdrop

The AI reorganisation sits inside a longer run of corporate cuts at Amazon. On October 28, 2025, Amazon said it would cut about 14,000 corporate jobs while increasing spending on AI. Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, said at the time that the cuts were about “shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets”. A further 16,000 positions followed in January 2026.

In April 2026, Amazon called reports of another round of layoffs planned for May “false and not based in fact”. The same report says Amazon forecast $125 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, most of it for AI infrastructure and data centers. The Nova restructuring follows the same pattern: fewer, larger bets, with spending going to the projects the company ranks highest.

What it means for builders on Nova

For developers and teams building on Amazon’s models, the practical picture splits in two.

• On Nova Premier, Omni, Reel or Canvas: reports describe limited support for existing customers and minimal resources. That suggests little or no further improvement to these models. Teams relying on them for complex reasoning, multimodal input, video or image generation should test alternatives now, since no source gives a timeline for how long limited support lasts.
• On Nova Act or Nova Forge: both are reported as continuing. Nova Act stays available through AWS and Nova Forge keeps receiving support.
• On Nova2 Lite or Nova2 Sonic: The Herald Business reports these lighter models are being retained.

There are open questions. It is unclear whether the new flagship model will be offered as a direct replacement for the retired models, whether it will cover video and image generation, and whether code written for current Nova APIs will carry over. The model may keep the Nova brand, but a shared name would not by itself mean a compatible interface. The closure of the San Francisco lab, which worked on browser-based agents, also raises questions about how much new agent research continues outside the existing Nova Act service.

What to watch next

• re:Invent: whether the Frontier Model Research team unveils its new foundation model there, as reported, and what it can do.
• The name: whether the new model keeps the Nova brand.
• Support timelines: any formal deprecation dates for Nova Premier, Omni, Reel and Canvas. None has been announced.
• Agent work: how Nova Act develops now that the lab that worked on browser agents is closed.
• Further cuts: whether more teams in Amazon’s AGI organisation are affected, given that the organisation remains active while individual projects face cuts.

For other recent shifts among the large AI labs, see Anthropic’s filing to go public and OpenAI’s release of GPT-6.1 Terra.