Amazon.com names Peter DeSantis to lead AGI team

In a memo to employees from CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon said: “At Amazon, we often start new businesses in parts of the company where there’s an initial customer need, and as they grow and get momentum, we assess where they’re best situated to maximize potential for customers and Amazon over the long term. 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. I’ve asked Peter DeSantis to lead a new organization that drives our most expansive AI models (e.g. Nova-and the team we’ve called “AGI”), silicon development (e.g. Graviton, Trainium, Nitro), and quantum computing… As part of this organizational change, Pieter Abbeel will lead our frontier model research team (the team that builds the base model) in AGI… Finally, I want to recognize Rohit Prasad, who has decided to leave Amazon at the end of this year. Rohit joined Amazon in 2013, during the early days of Alexa, to help us build a conversational AI that could make customers’ lives easier. Rohit helped Alexa grow from an ambitious idea into a service that now touches hundreds of millions of customers’ lives every day. The path ahead is full of opportunity. 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. I’m excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon’s future.”