Rohit Prasad, Senior VP & Head Scientist for Alexa, Amazon, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2022 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
Ben McShane | Sportsfile | Getty Images
Rohit Prasad, a top Amazon executive overseeing its artificial general intelligence unit, is leaving at the end of this year, the company confirmed Wednesday.
As part of the move, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a blog post that the company is reorganizing the AGI unit under a more expansive division that will also include its silicon development and quantum computing teams. The new division will be led by Peter DeSantis, a 27-year veteran of Amazon who currently serves as a senior vice president in its cloud unit.
Jassy said the company is reorganizing its AI teams as it believes it has reached an “inflection point” with the technologies.
Amazon has been trying to beat the perception held by some industry watchers that it’s falling behind rivals in developing AI products. The company released its own foundation models, called Nova, as it races to compete with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. It also makes its own line of Trainium custom AI chips that compete with Nvidia.
“With the foundation that’s been built, the traction we’re seeing, and Peter’s leadership bringing unified focus to these technologies, we’re well-positioned to lead and deliver meaningful capabilities for our customers,” Jassy wrote. “I’m excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon’s future.”
DeSantis will report directly to Jassy, he noted. The company is also tapping Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon in 2024 after it acquired robotics startup Covariant, to lead Amazon’s frontier model research team within the AGI group.
DeSantis joined Amazon in 1998, starting in the early days of Amazon Web Services as a general manager, and working his way up to become an SVP in 2016. For the past four years, he’s led the AWS computing product teams, which include compute, storage, database, security and custom chip development, according to his LinkedIn page.
Prasad, who joined Amazon in 2013, previously served as a head scientist for Alexa before he was tapped in August to steer the company’s development of AGI.
Jassy said in the memo that Prasad has been “missionary, passionate, and selfless, and I’m grateful for his leadership, his technical vision, and everything he’s built here.”
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