The latest Amazon leadership announcement from CEO Andy Jassy signals a pivotal shift in how the company is organizing its most critical future technologies. As Amazon’s newer innovations gain scale and customer momentum, the company is restructuring leadership to ensure long-term impact across AI, cloud infrastructure, and emerging computing platforms.
According to Jassy, Amazon often incubates new businesses close to early customer needs and later realigns them as they mature. He believes the company has now reached an inflection point with several foundational technologies that will shape future customer experiences. To meet this moment, Amazon is creating a new organization with a singular focus on advanced AI models, custom silicon, and quantum computing.
Peter DeSantis has been appointed to lead this new organization and will report directly to Jassy. The move brings together Amazon’s most expansive AI initiatives, including its Nova models and AGI efforts, alongside its industry-leading silicon development programs such as Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro, as well as its growing investments in quantum computing.
Jassy emphasized that DeSantis is uniquely qualified for this role. With more than 27 years at Amazon, DeSantis has led some of the most transformative technologies in modern computing.
He was instrumental in launching Amazon EC2 in 2006, a service that fundamentally changed cloud computing. Under his leadership, AWS introduced core infrastructure services such as block and file storage, load balancing, networking, and monitoring, capabilities that remain central to AWS customers today.
DeSantis also spearheaded the acquisition of Annapurna Labs in 2015, laying the foundation for Amazon’s custom silicon strategy. He continues to oversee that team, which has since delivered chips that improve performance, efficiency, and cost across AWS workloads.
In 2016, he took on responsibility for AWS Infrastructure, managing global data centers, networking, hardware, and supply chains that now span 38 regions and 120 Availability Zones worldwide.
In 2021, DeSantis assumed leadership of AWS Utility Computing, overseeing compute, storage, databases, analytics, AI services, and messaging. This portfolio is widely regarded as the industry benchmark for cloud platforms. Jassy highlighted DeSantis’ rare combination of deep technical expertise, operational discipline, and ability to deliver reliable systems at massive scale.
The timing of this Amazon leadership announcement is closely tied to recent advances. With Nova 2 models launching at AWS re:Invent, rapid growth in custom silicon adoption, and increasing benefits from tight integration across models, chips, and cloud infrastructure, Amazon wants DeSantis fully focused on these high-impact areas. The goal is to accelerate invention cycles while maintaining the high standards customers expect.
As part of the reorganization, Pieter Abbeel will take over leadership of Amazon’s frontier model research team within AGI. Abbeel is a globally recognized AI researcher and co-founder of Covariant, known for pioneering commercial foundation models for robotics.
His background in generative AI and reinforcement learning positions him to push Amazon’s base model research forward. He will also continue his work with Amazon’s Robotics team, reinforcing connections between AI research and real-world deployment.
Jassy noted that further details on the organizational design will be shared by DeSantis in the near future. Meanwhile, existing leaders within AWS Utility Computing will continue in their roles, with some expanded responsibilities. AWS CEO Matt Garman is expected to provide additional clarity on the updated AWS structure in a follow-up communication.
The announcement also marked an important transition with the departure of Rohit Prasad, who will leave Amazon at the end of the year. Prasad joined Amazon in 2013 during the early development of Alexa and played a central role in building conversational AI that now reaches hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
Over the past two years, Prasad led the creation of Amazon Nova and the AGI organization, delivering twelve foundation models with strong price-performance characteristics. These models are now used by tens of thousands of companies across a wide range of industries. Jassy credited Prasad with building a strong team, differentiated technology, and a culture of ambitious invention.
Reflecting on Prasad’s impact, Jassy described him as passionate, selfless, and deeply committed to Amazon’s mission. He expressed gratitude for Prasad’s leadership, technical vision, and lasting contributions to the company’s AI strategy.
Looking ahead, Jassy expressed confidence in Amazon’s direction. With unified leadership across AI models, silicon, and cloud infrastructure, the company believes it is well positioned to deliver meaningful new capabilities for customers. The combination of strong foundations, growing customer traction, and focused leadership is expected to shape Amazon’s next chapter of innovation.
This Amazon leadership announcement underscores the company’s intent to lead at the intersection of AI, cloud, and advanced computing, areas that will define the future of technology and customer experience. For more in-depth updates on AI, cloud innovation, and major tech leadership moves, stay connected with the latest insights at ainewstoday.org.
