June 28 (Reuters) - Amazon.com ( AMZN ) hired away

artificial intelligence startup Adept's co-founders and some of

its team in a move that echoes one by rival Microsoft ( MSFT ),

as it seeks to battle a perception that it is playing catch-up

in AI.

Adept said in a blog post Friday that cofounder and CEO

David Luan, as well as several other co-founders and employees

were leaving to join Amazon ( AMZN ).

The San Francisco-based startup, which has raised over $410

million and is valued above $1 billion, already named a new CEO.

The move is similar to one by Microsoft ( MSFT ), which in March

hired away much of Inflection AI's leadership and employees and

agreed to pay a roughly $650 million licensing fee.

That deal has attracted regulatory scrutiny - the Federal

Trade Commission is looking into whether the deal was a play to

skirt merger disclosure requirements, a person told Reuters

earlier this month.

Adept said it would continue to operate independently of

Amazon ( AMZN ). Amazon ( AMZN ) will pay Adept a licensing fee to use some of its

technology, which helps automate business functions. An Amazon ( AMZN )

spokesperson declined to disclose terms of the non-exclusive

deal.

Amazon ( AMZN ) is investing towards training an ambitious large

language model, Reuters has reported, hoping it could rival top

models from Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed OpenAI and Alphabet. The

new additions from Adept signal the tech giant's ambition to

work on AI agents tools, an area major labs are focusing on.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Amazon ( AMZN ) is racing to

update its Alexa voice assistant to fully integrate generative

AI, which can respond almost instantaneously with full sentences

to complicated prompts or queries.

The Amazon ( AMZN ) spokesperson said the Adept employees have

already joined the company and about 20 Adept workers remain at

the startup. Adept didn't respond to a request for comment.

At Amazon ( AMZN ), Luan and a number of others will report to Rohit

Prasad, who oversees artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

Others will join the team developing devices and other services,

according to an internal memo viewed by Reuters.

Prasad, the former head of Alexa, who now reports directly

to Amazon ( AMZN ) CEO Andy Jassy, brought in researchers working on

Alexa AI and the Amazon ( AMZN ) science team to work on training models,

uniting AI efforts across the company with dedicated resources.

Prasad said in the memo that the hires "will significantly

help us on our quest to achieving AGI."

Adept also held discussions with other tech companies

including Meta, which decided not to pursue a tie-up or

partnership, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Meta

declined to comment.