Amazon scales back Nova AI models, bets on new Frontier team

Amazon is scaling back active development of most in-house Nova AI models, including Nova Premier, Omni, Reel, and Canvas, though they'll stay online for existing customers in maintenance mode. The company is instead building a new Frontier Model Research group, with a new foundation model expected to debut at AWS re:Invent this fall.

Why it matters: This suggests Amazon is conceding that its first generation of in-house frontier models didn't keep pace with Gemini, GPT, and Claude, and is resetting its model strategy rather than iterating on Nova. It fits a pattern where big cloud providers hedge in-house model bets with heavy external investment, as Amazon has also done with its large stake in Anthropic.