Covariant

Covariant was founded in 2017 (originally as Embodied Intelligence) by former OpenAI researchers Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, Rocky Duan, and Tianhao Zhang. It became one of the most watched AI-robotics startups by building the Covariant Brain - an AI system that lets robot arms pick nearly any SKU on day one - deployed with logistics customers including Radial, Knapp, and ABB. In March 2024 it unveiled RFM-1, a robotics foundation model trained on millions of episodes of real-world pick-and-place data. On 30 August 2024, Amazon entered a reverse-acquihire: it hired co-founders Chen, Abbeel, and Duan along with ~25% of Covariant's staff and took a non-exclusive license to its models, reportedly for roughly $380M plus a $20M deferred payment (per 2025 whistleblower filings). The remaining company is led by former COO Ted Stinson (now CEO) and co-founder Tianhao Zhang, continuing to operate but with its core research team and RFM-1 authors gone. Status is treated here as 'acquired' given the effective takeout of the founding team and IP license.