Amazon is undergoing a significant strategic reorganization of its artificial intelligence (AI) teams, marked by the departure of its long-serving AI chief, Indian-origin Rohit Prasad, and the appointment of Peter DeSantis to lead a newly consolidated AI unit. The news of Prasad's departure after a 12-year tenure was announced by CEO Andy Jassy on December 18, who lauded Prasad's foundational contributions to the company's AI endeavors.

Rohit Prasad joined Amazon in 2013, during the nascent stages of Alexa's development, with a mission to build a conversational AI that would simplify customers' lives. Under his leadership, Alexa blossomed from an ambitious concept into a widely adopted service that currently impacts hundreds of millions of customers daily. More recently, over the past two years, Prasad spearheaded the creation of Amazon Nova and the company's Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI) unit. This team was responsible for developing twelve state-of-the-art foundation models, recognized for their industry-leading price-performance, which are now being utilized by tens of thousands of companies across diverse industries and use cases. The AGI team's responsibilities include overseeing Amazon's Nova-branded AI models and serving as the digital brains behind the Alexa voice assistant. Jassy commended Prasad for building a robust team, cultivating differentiated technology, driving growing customer momentum, and fostering a culture of ambitious invention, describing him as "missionary, passionate, and selfless." Prasad's significant impact in the field was further recognized in 2024 when TIME Magazine included him on its prestigious 'TIME100 Most Influential People in AI 2024' list.

Before his impactful career at Amazon, Rohit Prasad, a native of Ranchi, Jharkhand, India, completed his degree in Electrical and Communication Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra. He then pursued an MS in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in the USA. Prasad commenced his professional journey at BBN Technologies, a company renowned for its pivotal role in developing ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. During his 14-year tenure at BBN, he progressed from a staff scientist to a Senior Director, overseeing critical speech, language, and multimedia technologies.

The reorganization sees Peter DeSantis, a veteran of Amazon with 27 years of service, stepping into a pivotal new role. He will lead a new organization that is tasked with driving Amazon's most expansive AI models, including Nova and the AGI team, alongside silicon development initiatives such as Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro, as well as quantum computing research. CEO Andy Jassy emphasized the strategic timing of these changes, stating, "I believe we are at this inflection point with several of our new technologies that will power a significant amount of our future customer experiences." This announcement followed weeks after the Amazon Web Services (AWS) annual cloud computing conference in Las Vegas, which prominently featured AI tools and services. Complementing DeSantis's leadership, Pieter Abbeel, a globally recognized AI researcher and co-founder of Covariant, will head Amazon's frontier model research team within the AGI unit.

The primary motivation behind these leadership and organizational shifts is Amazon's ambition to bolster its reputation in the rapidly evolving AI landscape, particularly in comparison to leading rivals such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, who have recently achieved significant breakthroughs with their AI models. Amazon has strategically invested approximately $8 billion in the AI startup Anthropic, integrating its advanced technology into various internal and consumer products. Furthermore, recent reports indicate that the company is considering a substantial $10 billion investment in OpenAI, signaling a concerted effort to accelerate its AI capabilities and market position.

Peter DeSantis brings a wealth of experience to his new role, having been with Amazon for nearly three decades. Jassy praised DeSantis as an unparalleled leader, highlighting his track record in leading some of the most transformative technologies in computing history. Previously, DeSantis served as the Senior Vice President of Utility Computing, overseeing a majority of AWS engineering teams. He was instrumental in the launch of Amazon EC2 in 2006 and spent many years building the team behind it. Under his leadership, several other critical AWS services, including Block Storage, File Storage, Load Balancing, Networking, and Monitoring, were also introduced. In his elevated position, DeSantis will report directly to Jassy, a testament to the strategic importance of this new AI unit and his demonstrated ability to solve problems at the cutting edge of technical possibility.