Amazon shakes up AI staff as veteran Prasad leaves, DeSantis promoted

Dec 17 : Amazon is shaking up its synthetic intelligence staff with one long-time veteran heading for the exit and one other taking up a extra expansive group that features AI fashions, customized silicon and quantum computing. 

The transfer comes simply two weeks after the Amazon Web Services annual cloud computing convention in Las Vegas, which the corporate has changed into a showcase for AI instruments and providers. 

Amazon has been working to shake a popularity that it’s trailing opponents like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI in creating AI fashions. It has invested roughly $8 billion in startup Anthropic and built-in its expertise into a number of of its inside and shopper merchandise, and Amazon is contemplating as a lot as a $10 billion funding into OpenAI. 

“We are at this inflection point with several of our new technologies that will power a significant amount of our future customer experiences,” mentioned Amazon CEO Andy Jassy within the publish on Wednesday.

Cloud government Peter DeSantis, a 27-year Amazon veteran, will lead the new unit overseeing its most superior applied sciences, in keeping with an organization publish. Rohit Prasad, who helped construct the Alexa voice assistant and led its AI efforts not too long ago, will step down at yr’s finish.

Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon final yr, is about to go up frontier mannequin analysis with the AGI group and proceed to work on robotics. He got here to Amazon when the corporate employed the founders of Covariant, a robotics startup. 

DeSantis led AWS infrastructure and utility computing companies, overseeing international information facilities and core cloud providers. He additionally spearheaded the 2015 acquisition of Annapurna Labs, which designs Amazon’s customized chips.

The appointment comes as the corporate appears to unify improvement of its Nova AI fashions, chip applications corresponding to Graviton and Trainium, and rising quantum computing initiatives.

Jassy mentioned Prasad was leaving of his personal accord. It was not clear what he would do subsequent.