Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said today that the e-commerce giant has created a new AI division and appointed a company veteran to lead it.
The move marks gathering momentum for AI as a pivotal technology for the future of the company. “I believe we are at this inflection point with several of our new technologies that will power a significant amount of our future customer experiences,” Jassy said in a blog post.
Peter DeSantis, the former senior vice president of AWS utility computing products, will lead the division. He will oversee Amazon’s work in AI models – its Nova family of models that power Alexa – chip development and quantum computing.
“Peter combines unusual technical depth with a track record of solving problems at the edge of what’s technically possible – and delivering technologies that operate reliably at massive scale,” Jassy said.
Rohit Prasad, who led the AGI team overseeing AI model development, will leave the company by year’s end. He also built up the conversational AI capabilities of Alexa.