Overview
- Vahdat will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai in the newly created post, according to an internal memo first reported by Semafor and corroborated by other outlets.
- Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told staff the change establishes AI infrastructure as a key company focus, underscoring a top-level emphasis on compute and orchestration.
- Alphabet expects to spend about $90–93 billion on data centers, chips, and related hardware by the end of 2025, with reporting indicating the company has signaled even larger outlays ahead.
- Vahdat has overseen core systems including custom TPUs, the Jupiter data center network (described at roughly 13 petabits per second), the Borg cluster manager, and Axion Arm-based CPUs.
- He recently unveiled the seventh-generation TPU, Ironwood, with more than 9,000 chips per pod delivering 42.5 exaflops, as Google seeks an edge in a race where compute capacity is a key differentiator against Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI.