Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad to Exit as Andy Jassy Signals Turning Point in Company’s AI Strategy

Amazon is set to witness a significant leadership transition in its artificial intelligence ranks, with Rohit Prasad, one of the company’s most influential AI leaders, preparing to leave at the end of the year. The development comes alongside a broader restructuring of Amazon’s AI operations—one that CEO Andy Jassy has described as a pivotal moment in the company’s technology journey.

Prasad, who has been closely associated with Amazon’s most ambitious AI initiatives, most recently led its artificial general intelligence (AGI) efforts. His departure marks the end of a long chapter that began in 2013, when he joined Amazon and later became a central figure behind Alexa’s intelligence. Over the years, Prasad helped shape the company’s thinking around large-scale AI systems and long-term research.

In a memo to employees, Jassy announced that Amazon is reorganising its AGI unit and merging it into a larger, unified organisation. This expanded division will oversee not only advanced AI work but also Amazon’s silicon development and quantum computing teams. According to Jassy, the move reflects Amazon’s belief that it has reached an “inflection point” in AI and related technologies.

Leadership of this newly structured organisation will be handed to Peter DeSantis, a veteran Amazon executive and senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS). DeSantis, who joined Amazon in 1998, will now report directly to Jassy—a signal of how central AI has become to Amazon’s future strategy. With nearly three decades at the company, DeSantis brings deep institutional knowledge and has played a critical role in building and scaling AWS into a global cloud powerhouse.

The reshuffle comes at a time when Amazon is keen to counter perceptions that it is lagging behind competitors such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic in the fast-moving AI race. While rivals have gained attention with consumer-facing AI products, Amazon has largely focused on enterprise AI, cloud infrastructure and in-house technology development.

Over the past year, the company has introduced its own family of foundation models under the Nova brand and continued heavy investment in custom hardware. Its Trainium AI chips, designed for large-scale model training, are positioned as an alternative to Nvidia’s dominant processors. By bringing AI models, custom silicon and quantum computing under one umbrella, Amazon is betting on tighter integration between hardware and software to differentiate itself.

“With the foundation that’s been built, the traction we’re seeing, and Peter’s leadership bringing unified focus to these technologies, we’re well-positioned to lead and deliver meaningful capabilities for our customers,” Jassy wrote. He added that he is “excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon’s future.”

Amazon is also reinforcing its research capabilities. Pieter Abbeel, a prominent AI researcher who joined Amazon in 2024 after the acquisition of robotics startup Covariant, will now lead the company’s frontier model research team within the AGI group. This appointment underlines Amazon’s intent to invest deeply in long-term, cutting-edge AI research.

Reflecting on Prasad’s exit, Jassy praised his contributions, describing him as “missionary, passionate, and selfless,” and thanked him for the leadership, technical direction and teams he helped build—closing a defining chapter in Amazon’s evolving AI story.