Rohit Prasad, the manager who has led Amazon’s synthetic intelligence initiatives and overseen the creation of its homegrown Nova AI fashions, is leaving the corporate on the finish of the yr.
In a memo Wednesday morning, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy named Peter DeSantis, a 27-year firm veteran and prime cloud infrastructure government, to guide a brand new group that mixes its Nova and mannequin analysis groups with customized silicon and quantum computing.
AI researcher Pieter Abbeel, who joined the corporate final yr when Amazon employed the founders of robotics startup Covariant, will lead the frontier mannequin analysis group inside Amazon’s AGI group, whereas persevering with his work with the corporate’s robotics group, based on Jassy’s memo.
Information of Prasad’s departure comes two weeks after Amazon unveiled its Nova 2 fashions at its annual re:Invent convention. The corporate is making an attempt to shut the hole with AI rivals together with OpenAI and Google within the race to develop more and more succesful AI programs.
Prasad joined Amazon in 2013 in the course of the early days of Alexa and was named senior vp and head scientist for synthetic common intelligence in mid-2023 as a part of a broader effort to recharge the corporate’s AI initiatives within the face of stiff competitors.
In his memo, Jassy framed the reorganization as an effort to unify Amazon’s most necessary AI bets at an “inflection level” for the applied sciences. The brand new group will convey collectively Amazon’s most expansive AI fashions, together with Nova and AGI, with its customized silicon improvement group, which builds chips together with Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro, in addition to its quantum computing efforts.
DeSantis, who will report on to Jassy, has led a few of Amazon’s greatest technical initiatives. He launched Amazon EC2, the corporate’s core cloud computing infrastructure, oversaw the acquisition of chip designer Annapurna Labs in 2015, and most not too long ago ran AWS Utility Computing, which incorporates compute, storage, database, and AI companies.
Jassy referred to as him a frontrunner with “uncommon technical depth” and a observe file of “fixing issues on the fringe of what’s technically attainable.”
Prasad’s departure was talked about towards the top of Jassy’s memo, with the Amazon CEO saying that Prasad “has constructed a powerful group, differentiated know-how, rising buyer momentum, and a tradition of formidable invention.” The memo described the departure as Prasad’s determination, calling him “missionary, passionate, and selfless” and thanking him for “every part he’s constructed right here.”
It’s not but clear what Prasad will do subsequent.
In a separate memo, AWS CEO Matt Garman laid out a brand new inner construction consisting of seven AWS teams: Compute, Platform, and AI Providers (led by Dave Brown); Storage and Analytics (Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec); Databases (G2 Krishnamoorthy); Safety and Observability (Chet Kapoor); Agentic AI (Swami Sivasubramanian); Utilized AI Options (Colleen Aubrey); and Infrastructure and Area Providers (Prasad Kalyanaraman).
Amazon has positioned itself as a serious participant in enterprise AI via its Bedrock platform. Its Nova fashions are aggressive on business benchmarks. The Nova Forge service, launched at re:Invent, lets companies and builders customise fashions utilizing their very own information.
Individually at re:Invent, the corporate unveiled a sequence of “frontier brokers,” aiming to get forward of the business’s push towards autonomous AI programs for companies.
However Amazon remains to be typically considered as a quick follower in generative AI, trailing OpenAI, Google, and others within the notion of frontier mannequin capabilities. Amazon has partnered carefully with Claude maker Anthropic as a counterpunch to Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI.
Extra not too long ago, Amazon has additionally been in discussions to speculate $10 billion or extra in OpenAI, based on a report this week from The Info, citing three folks conversant in the talks.
In an interview with GeekWire at re:Invent, Prasad gave no trace that he was making ready to go away. He described Nova Forge as “a sport changer” and mentioned the corporate was targeted on proving that AI might ship actual worth for its enterprise clients.
Prasad took a realistic view of synthetic common intelligence, pushing again on what he described as Silicon Valley’s tendency to painting AGI as “some form of a god energy.” He spoke as an alternative of creating “typically clever programs you can specialize to your objective.”
