Amazon says AI chief Rohit Prasad is leaving, Peter DeSantis to lead ‘AGI’ group

Rohit Prasad, a top Amazon executive overseeing its artificial general intelligence unit, is leaving the company 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 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.

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