Haven't they invested hundreds of millions trying to train frontier models?

I don't know how much they are spending to be fair.

I am basing my observation on the noises they are making. They did put out a model called Nova but they are not drumming it up at all. The model page makes no claims of benchmarks or performance. There are no signs of them poaching talent. Their CEO has not been in the press singing praises about AI unlike every big tech CEO.

Maybe they have a skunk-works team on it but something tells me they are waiting for the paint to dry.

Well, i have had chats with a few engineers working in Amazon retail and there is talk about adding agents for Ops and similar internal tasks. So there is a bunch of AI related things happening, and like others have said, they rent shovels for the rush, so they will bank all the money without having to compete with the money bonfires that others are burning.

  I get the feeling Amazon wants to be the shovel seller for the AI rush than be a frontier model lab.

I think this is simply wrong. Don't you think Amazon would love to be in Google's position of having Gemini 3 Pro?

The shovel maker will never make more money than a few lucky gold diggers.