Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said the e-commerce giant will tap senior cloud infrastructure executive Peter DeSantis to lead a newly formed organization overseeing the company’s most advanced AI models, including Nova and its AGI team, as well as custom silicon development and quantum computing. In his new role, DeSantis will report directly to Jassy.
DeSantis has been at Amazon (AMZN) for 27 years, most recently leading AWS Utility Computing services, which include compute, storage, database, analytics, various AI services, messaging, and more. “With our Nova 2 models just launched at re:Invent, our custom silicon growing rapidly, and the advantages of optimizing across models, chips, and cloud software and infrastructure, we wanted to free Peter up to focus his energy, invention cycles, and leadership on these new areas,” highlighted Jassy.
As part of the organizational change, Jassy said Pieter Abbeel will lead Amazon’s (AMZN) frontier model research team. He is the co-founder of Covariant, which pioneered the first commercial foundation model for robotics. “His deep expertise in generative AI and reinforcement learning makes him well-suited to advance Amazon’s AI research as we push the boundaries of what’s possible for customers,” noted Jassey.
Shares of Amazon (AMZN) edged 0.2% higher in Wednesday afternoon trading to $223.03 vs. the 52-week range of $161.38 to $258.60.