Amazon CEO Says New AI Leader Has ‘Unified Focus,’ Unveils AI Innovator Prasad’s Departure

AWS executive Peter Desantis will lead a new organization that looks to unify AI models, silicon chips and quantum computing, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says longtime Amazon Web Services innovator Peter Desantis will lead a new organization focused on unifying its AI models, chips and quantum computing technologies.

Meanwhile, the $720 billion tech giant’s current head scientist and top AI executive, Rohit Prasad, will leave the company.

“I’ve asked Peter DeSantis to lead a new organization that drives our most expansive AI models (e.g. Nova—and the team we’ve called “AGI”), silicon development (e.g. Graviton, Trainium, Nitro), and quantum computing,” said Jassy in an internal message to employees today.

Desantis is a 27-year AWS veteran who currently leads AWS infrastructure and utility computing businesses, overseeing global data centers and core cloud services.

Seattle-based Amazon is seeking to unify development of its Nova AI foundational models, chipsets like Trainium and Graviton, as well as Amazon’s emerging quantum computing technologies.

“With our Nova 2 models just launched at re:Invent, our custom silicon growing rapidly, and the advantages of optimizing across models, chips, and cloud software and infrastructure—we wanted to free Peter up to focus his energy, invention cycles, and leadership on these new areas,” said Amazon CEO Jassy.

Desantis (pictured above) will now report directly to Jassy. His current title is senior vice president of AWS utility computing products.

“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 said.

Amazon AI Leader And Alexa Innovator Is Leaving

After nearly 13 years working in top science and engineering executive roles, Rohit Prasad is leaving Amazon by the end of the year.

Prasad—senior vice president and head scientist for Amazon’s artificial general intelligence business—has been critical in leading advancements in foundational AI model such as Nova and Nova 2.

Jassy highlighted how Prasad helped Amazon build conversational AI technologies, such as Alexa, that made customers’ lives easier.

“Rohit helped Alexa grow from an ambitious idea into a service that now touches hundreds of millions of customers’ lives every day,” said Jassy.

“For the past two years, Rohit has led the creation of Amazon Nova and our AGI organization, building 12 state-of-the-art foundation models with industry-leading price-performance that are now being used by tens of thousands of companies across almost all industries and use cases,” he added.

New Fronter Model Leader

In addition to the appointment of Desantis and departure of Prasad, Amazon’s CEO also unveiled that Pieter Abbeel will lead Amazon’s frontier model research team in AGI.

“Pieter is one of the world’s leading AI researchers, and co-founder of Covariant, which pioneered the first commercial foundation model for robotics,” Jassy said.

Abbeel is currently a distinguished scientist and vice president at Amazon.

Jassy said Abbeel’s deep expertise in generative AI and reinforcement learning makes him “well-suited to advance Amazon’s AI research.”

Abbeel will also continue his ongoing work with Amazon’s robotics team, according to Jassy.

“I’m excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon’s future,” Jassy said.