Amazon's Peter DeSantis to lead AI, chips and quantum
He will oversee a new Amazon organisation that combines AI foundation models, custom silicon and quantum computing.
Amazon said Peter DeSantis has worked at the company for 27 years and led projects including the launch of Amazon EC2 in 2006 and the 2015 acquisition of Annapurna Labs, the company said in a statement. His new organisation brings together teams building Amazon Nova foundation models, Graviton and Trainium chips, and quantum computing efforts.
DeSantis views the three areas as mutually reinforcing. "All three of them are big, long-term bets for the company," DeSantis said. He added that quantum is the longest-term of the three and that lessons from the Annapurna chips business will be complementary as Amazon scales quantum hardware and software.
He highlighted recent product work and the push to get new hardware and services into customers' hands. DeSantis noted Graviton 5, released at re:Invent, and Trainium3 as current priorities, and said of Graviton 5: "Graviton 5 has truly gotten Graviton to the point where any workload that you want to run in the cloud probably runs best on Graviton." He also flagged Nova Forge as a capability for customers to customise Nova models.
DeSantis said he plans to deepen Nova's use across retail, Alexa, advertising and operations so each business can shape models to its needs. He described Amazon as a place for long-term builders with access to compute, real-world applications and scale, and said, "We're uniquely long-term focused as a company."
After 27 years at Amazon, DeSantis said the company retains elements of the startup culture he joined, including ground-up innovation and a focus on customers.
The Recap
- Amazon named Peter DeSantis to lead a new technology organisation.
- He has led EC2 launch and Annapurna acquisition at Amazon.
- Teams will deploy Graviton5, Trainium3 and Nova Forge to customers.
