Amazon’s $1 billion industrial innovation fund is to step up investments in companies that combine artificial intelligence and robotics, as the ecommerce giant seeks to drive efficiencies across its logistics network. Franziska Bossart, head of the corporate venture capital arm that was set up in 2022, told the Financial Times that “generative AI holds a lot of promise for robotics and automation” and is an area “we are going to focus on this year.” She added that the fund’s pace of investment would “absolutely” accelerate in 2024. The Amazon industrial innovation fund has made 12 investments in total, including in Mantis Robotics, which is developing a robotic arm that uses sensors to work alongside humans. The fund’s search for new investments in generative AI groups comes as Big Tech companies pour billions into developing the technology, which can produce humanlike text, images, and code in seconds.