Particle.news
Download on the App Store

Amazon Elevates Peter DeSantis to Lead Unified AI, Silicon and Quantum Group

Amazon calls the move an inflection point to tightly align model research with custom silicon and cloud infrastructure.

Overview

  • CEO Andy Jassy appointed 27-year Amazon executive Peter DeSantis to oversee a consolidated organization spanning AI models, custom chip development and quantum computing, reporting directly to him.
  • The new structure unites Nova and the AGI team with silicon programs including Graviton, Trainium and Nitro to enable end-to-end co-design across models, hardware and cloud software.
  • AI researcher Pieter Abbeel will head frontier model research within AGI and will continue his work with Amazon’s robotics efforts.
  • Rohit Prasad, who helped build Alexa and led the Nova/AGI program to deliver a dozen foundation models used by tens of thousands of companies, will depart at year-end.
  • The leadership shift accompanies substantial AI bets, including Amazon’s $8 billion investment in Anthropic, an AWS pledge of $50 billion for U.S. government AI infrastructure, and reported talks about a $10 billion investment in OpenAI.