Amazon Recasts AI Leadership as Veteran Prasad Exits
AWS infrastructure chief Peter DeSantis takes charge of advanced AI, chips and quantum initiatives.
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[Image source: Krishna Prasad/MITSMR Middle East]
Amazon is reorganizing its artificial intelligence leadership in a bid to sharpen its push into advanced models, custom silicon and quantum computing.
Peter DeSantis, a 27-year Amazon veteran previously responsible for Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and global data centers, will lead a newly expanded unit combining AI models, chips and quantum initiatives.
He had played a key role in Amazon’s 2015 acquisition of Annapurna Labs, which designs the company’s custom chips.
Rohit Prasad, a long-time Amazon leader who helped build the Alexa voice assistant and more recently led its AI efforts, will step down at the end of the year.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Prasad is leaving of his own accord, though it is not yet clear what he plans to do next.
The shake-up comes just two weeks after AWS’ annual cloud conference in Las Vegas, which the company has increasingly positioned as a showcase for its AI tools and services.
The changes also reflect Amazon’s broader effort to counter perceptions that it has lagged rivals such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in building cutting-edge AI models.
“We are at this inflection point with several of our new technologies that will power a significant amount of our future customer experiences,” Jassy said in a post announcing the changes.
The reorganization is designed to unify development across Amazon’s Nova AI models, its in-house chip programs such as Graviton and Trainium, and its emerging quantum computing initiatives, areas seen as critical to competing in the next phase of cloud and AI infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon last year, will head frontier model research within the company’s AGI organization, while continuing his work on robotics. Abbeel came to Amazon through its hiring of the founders of Covariant, a robotics startup focused on AI-driven automation.
Amazon has been ramping up investments to strengthen its AI position. It has poured roughly $8 billion into Anthropic, integrating the startup’s models into several internal and consumer-facing products. The company is also reportedly considering an investment of up to $10 billion into OpenAI, underscoring the scale of its ambitions.
