Amazon’s AI chief Rohit Prasad departs after a 12-year stint, marking one of the most important leadership changes in the company’s artificial intelligence journey. Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad departs at a time when AI is no longer a side project for tech companies—it is the core of future growth, competition, and survival.
Amazon confirmed that Rohit Prasad, who currently leads its Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) group, will leave the company in 2026. The announcement was shared by CEO Andy Jassy on December 17, 2025. As Amazon’s AI chief Rohit Prasad departs, the company is reshaping how its AI teams are organized, bringing research, hardware, and long-term technology under one leader.
This move shows that Amazon believes the next phase of AI will be won not just by smarter models, but by tighter coordination between software, chips, and cloud infrastructure.
Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad Departs During a Key Turning Point
The news that Amazon’s AI chief Rohit Prasad departs after a 12-year stint comes during a major shift in the global tech industry. Generative AI tools are moving fast from experiments to real-world business use. Companies like Google and Microsoft are investing heavily to stay ahead, and Amazon does not want to fall behind.
Andy Jassy described the moment as an “inflection point,” meaning decisions made now will shape Amazon’s position for years to come. As Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad departs, the company is choosing a more focused and centralized leadership structure to speed up decision-making and reduce internal barriers.
Rohit Prasad’s 12-Year Journey at Amazon
Rohit Prasad joined Amazon in 2013 and quickly became one of the company’s most trusted AI leaders. He played a major role in building Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, from the ground up. At the time, voice-based AI was new and risky, but Prasad helped turn Alexa into a product used in millions of homes around the world.
Alexa became known for its speech recognition and ability to understand everyday language. These features helped Amazon gain early credibility in AI, long before generative models became popular.
In 2023, after the rapid rise of ChatGPT changed the industry, Amazon created a new AGI group and placed Prasad in charge. His task was to move Amazon beyond voice commands and into advanced language models that could reason, write, and understand multiple types of data.
Under his leadership, Amazon introduced the Nova AI models, designed to balance performance and cost for business customers. Despite progress, Prasad often spoke openly about the limits of current AI testing methods, saying many benchmarks did not reflect real intelligence.
Now, as Amazon’s AI chief Rohit Prasad departs after a 12-year stint, he leaves behind a legacy tied closely to Amazon’s early and modern AI efforts.
New Leadership After Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad Departs
With Prasad leaving, Amazon has named Peter DeSantis to lead a newly combined group focused on AI models, custom chips, and quantum computing. DeSantis is one of Amazon’s longest-serving executives and has been with the company since 1998.
He played a major role in building Amazon Web Services (AWS) into the world’s largest cloud platform. By placing AI under an infrastructure expert, Amazon is making it clear that future AI success depends on scale, efficiency, and deep integration with the cloud.
Areas DeSantis Will Oversee
AI models: Including Amazon’s Nova family and future research
Custom chips: Such as Trainium, Graviton, and Nitro
Quantum computing: Long-term technology aimed at future breakthroughs
Andy Jassy said this structure will help Amazon move faster and align teams more closely. As Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad departs, leadership is shifting from experimentation to execution.
Strengthening Amazon’s Research Team
To support this new direction, Amazon has also appointed Pieter Abbeel to lead its frontier AI research team. Abbeel is a respected AI and robotics expert from UC Berkeley.
He joined Amazon after the company acquired his startup, Covariant, in 2024. His role is to ensure Amazon’s core AI models stay competitive with leading systems from OpenAI and Google.
This move shows that while Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad departs, Amazon is still investing heavily in top research talent.
Amazon’s AI Strategy and Major Investments
As Amazon’s AI chief Rohit Prasad departs after a 12-year stint, the company is also expanding its influence through large investments. Amazon is not relying only on its own technology—it is backing several major players in the AI space.
AWS recently announced major spending on AI infrastructure for U.S. government projects, aiming to become a trusted provider for secure and large-scale AI workloads.
Amazon has already invested $8 billion in Anthropic, one of the strongest competitors to OpenAI. At the same time, reports suggest Amazon is considering a $10 billion investment in OpenAI. If that happens, OpenAI could use Amazon’s Trainium chips to train future models, even though OpenAI has long worked closely with Microsoft.
This mix of building, buying, and partnering shows Amazon’s determination to stay central to the AI economy.
What This Means for AWS Customers
The fact that Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad departs matters most to AWS customers who rely on affordable and scalable AI services. Amazon’s goal is to control the full stack—from chips to cloud to models—so it can offer better prices and performance than competitors that depend heavily on third-party hardware.
Still, Amazon faces challenges. Critics say it was slower than others during the first wave of generative AI. By placing AI under Peter DeSantis, Amazon is signaling that future efforts will focus on real-world business use, reliability, and cost control.
Conclusion: Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad Departs, Ushering in a New Phase
As Amazon’s AI chief Rohit Prasad departs after a 12-year stint, the move marks the end of a long and influential chapter in Amazon’s AI story. Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad departs not because AI is slowing down, but because Amazon believes it needs a different structure to win the next phase.
With Peter DeSantis leading a unified AI, hardware, and infrastructure team—and with billions invested in OpenAI and Anthropic—Amazon is betting on its biggest strength: AWS. The success of this strategy will become clear over the next few years, but one thing is certain—Amazon is reshaping its AI future with long-term goals firmly in mind.