By Kimberley Kao
The head of a key Amazon artificial intelligence lab, David Luan, is leaving the company, the latest senior departure amid a reshuffle of the group's AI leadership.
Luan, who led Amazon's San Francisco AI Lab, said on Tuesday that he would be leaving at the end of the week to "cook up something new." He oversaw Amazon's AI agentic effort, Nova Act. Agents are AI tools that work by taking some action on behalf of users.
Luan joined Amazon's artificial general intelligence organization in 2024 after Adept AI, a startup he co-founded, struck a deal in which the U.S. tech giant agreed to hire some of the startup's employees and pay about $330 million to license its agent technology, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
"There's incredible work to be done at Amazon and opportunities for me to take on more areas. But with AGI so close, I decided to spend 100% of my time on teaching AI systems brand new capabilities," Luan said in a post on LinkedIn.
Amazon didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.
Amazon has shaken up its AI leadership in recent months. In December, the company announced the departure of Rohit Prasad, who oversaw its artificial general intelligence efforts and was previously the head scientist behind Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. It then appointed Peter DeSantis to oversee a new organization that would drive AI model development, quantum computing and chip making. DeSantis previously led Amazon's infrastructure teams.
The technology giant earlier this month unveiled plans for a massive increase in AI-related spending, estimating $200 billion in 2026 capital spending, a nearly 60% increase from last year and far above Wall Street expectations.
Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 24, 2026 22:32 ET (03:32 GMT)
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