Amazon Names New Chief To Drive AI Development After Rohit Prasad’s Exit

• DeSantis will now lead a wider organization responsible for driving its AI models, silicon development and quantum computing.
• Jassy said in the message that the reorganization of its AGI segment under a wider organization is because he believes “we are at this inflection point with several of our new technologies.”
• DeSantis will report directly to Jassy.

Amazon.com on Wednesday announced the appointment of company veteran Peter DeSantis to lead a new organization that drives most of its AI development efforts following the exit of Rohit Prasad.

Prasad, who joined Amazon in 2013, has decided to leave the company at the end of the year, CEO Andy Jassy said in a message to employees. Prasad was heading the company’s artificial general intelligence unit.

DeSantis will now lead a wider organization responsible for driving its AI models, silicon development and quantum computing. He has been with the company for over 27 years and heads the AWS Infrastructure team. “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,” Jassy said.

Jassy said in the message that the reorganization of its AGI segment under a wider organization is because he believes “we are at this inflection point with several of our new technologies.”

Amazon’s AI Efforts

Amazon has released its own AI foundation model called Nova to up its game in the AI race against OpenAI and Google. It is also making AI chips called Trainium to compete with Nvidia.

Earlier this week, The Information reported that Amazon is in talks to invest as much as $10 billion in OpenAI and that a key part of the agreement would be for OpenAI to use Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Trainium chips.

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

The CEO added that co-founder of Covariant Pieter Abbeel will now lead the company's team that builds the base model called the frontier model research team while continuing his ongoing work with the robotics team. Covariant was acquired by Amazon in 2024. 

How Did Stocktwits Users React?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around AMZN jumped from ‘bearish’ to ‘neutral’ territory over the past 24 hours, while message volume remained at ‘normal’ levels.

AMZN stock has gained 2% this year and dropped by about 4% over the past 12 months. 

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