Amazon is winding down most of its flagship Nova AI models. It is betting what remains on a single, bigger effort to build one genuinely competitive foundation model. The move gives shape to a retreat that until now looked mostly like closed offices and job cuts.
The company has begun deprecating most of its in-house Nova line, Business Insider first reported. That includes the high-end Premier and Omni models, the Reel video generator and the Canvas image generator. Some staff call this “KTLO” mode, short for “keep the lights on.” The models stay supported for existing customers, but are no longer a development priority.
This is the concrete update to a story we first covered months ago. Amazon shut its AGI Lab and quit a race it never led. Back then, the news was a closed lab and layoffs. Now it is clear which products are being sacrificed, and what they are being sacrificed for.
One big bet instead of many
Resources are shifting to a new effort called Frontier Model Research, or FMR, led by Pieter Abbeel. He joined Amazon through its 2024 acquisition of the robotics startup Covariant. A new flagship model is expected to debut at Amazon’s re:Invent conference this autumn, Reuters reported. It could still carry the Nova name.
