Rohit Prasad, the executive who has led Amazon’s artificial intelligence initiatives and overseen the creation of its homegrown Nova AI models, is leaving the company at the end of the year.
In a memo Wednesday morning, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy named Peter DeSantis, a 27-year company veteran and top cloud infrastructure executive, to lead a new organization that combines the Nova and model research teams with its silicon and quantum computing groups.
AI researcher Pieter Abbeel, who joined the company last year when Amazon hired the founders of robotics startup Covariant, will lead the frontier model research team within Amazon’s AGI organization, while continuing his work with the company’s robotics team, according to Jassy’s memo.
Prasad’s departure comes two weeks after Amazon unveiled its Nova 2 models at its annual re:Invent conference, and as the company attempts to close the gap with AI rivals including OpenAI and Google in the race to develop increasingly capable AI systems.
He joined Amazon in 2013 during the early days of Alexa and was named senior vice president and head scientist for artificial general intelligence in mid-2023 as part of a broader effort to recharge the company’s AI initiatives in the face of stiff competition.
In his memo, Jassy framed the reorganization as an effort to unify Amazon’s most important AI bets at an “inflection point” for the technologies. Prasad’s departure was mentioned toward the end of the memo, with Jassy saying that Prasad “has built a strong team, differentiated technology, growing customer momentum, and a culture of ambitious invention.”
The memo described the departure as Prasad’s decision, with Jassy calling him “missionary, passionate, and selfless” and thanking him for “everything he’s built here.”
It’s not yet clear what Prasad will do next.
Developing story, more to come.
https://ift.tt/A8dNpnK December 17, 2025 at 05:29PM GeekWire
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