On December 17, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed in a blog post that the company is reorganising its artificial general intelligence (AGI) unit under a more expansive division that will also include its silicon development and quantum computing teams. As per Jassy, the company's current head of the AGI unit, Rohit Prasad, is leaving the company, and post this, the new division will be led by Peter DeSantis, a 27-year veteran at Amazon, who currently serves as senior vice president (SVP) in its cloud unit.
In the post, Jassy wrote, “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.”
According to reports, Amazon’s decision to introduce new leadership stems from its efforts to revitalise its image, as it has been lagging behind competitors like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, which continue to make significant strides with their AI models.
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After 27 years with the company, DeSantis is now set to lead Amazon’s AGI unit that drives the company’s most expansive AI models, silicon development and quantum computing. DeSantis, who will report to Jassy, will be taking over the reins from Prasad who joined Amazon in 2013. Prasad previously served as a head scientist for Alexa before he was tapped in 2023 to lead Amazon’s AGI development.
As the head of AWS Infrastructure, DeSantis oversaw Amazon’s expansive global footprint of data centres, hardware and networking systems, managing infrastructure that spanned 38 geographic regions and 120 Availability Zones worldwide. He also played a pivotal role as the leader behind the launch and growth of Amazon EC2 in 2006, one of AWS’s earliest and most foundational cloud services. Under his leadership, EC2 evolved significantly, expanding to include essential offerings such as block storage, file storage, load balancing, networking, and monitoring, all of which became core components supporting AWS customers at scale.
As part of the AI push with the AGI unit, Amazon has introduced its own family of foundation models known as Nova, signalling an intensified drive to keep pace with leading AI players such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, all of whom have been rapidly advancing their model capabilities. In parallel, Amazon has also been investing heavily in its custom silicon strategy, producing its Trainium line of AI chips designed to optimise large scale model training and offering a competitive alternative to Nvidia’s dominant GPU lineup. With DeSantis’s appointment, Jassy is excited to see what the unit is capable of achieving further. In the post he said: “I’m excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon’s future.”
First Published: Dec 18, 2025, 15:52
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