Amazon.com Inc. is restructuring its artificial intelligence operations, placing a senior leader from its powerful cloud division at the helm of a newly formed unit as it intensifies competition with Microsoft, Google, and a growing field of AI-focused startups. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy announced Wednesday that Peter DeSantis, a longtime Amazon Web Services executive, will lead the new organization, marking a significant step in centralizing the company’s AI strategy.

A Unified AI Organization Takes Shape

The new group brings together Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence team — responsible for the Nova-branded AI models and the core intelligence behind Alexa — with the company’s custom chipmaking efforts and quantum computing research. By consolidating these previously separate initiatives, Amazon aims to accelerate innovation and better align hardware, software, and research under a single leadership structure.

The reorganization builds on changes Amazon began implementing after OpenAI’s ChatGPT ignited a race for advanced AI tools in late 2022. At that time, Amazon centralized AI work that had been split between AWS and the Alexa organization, signaling its ambition to develop multipurpose AI systems that could rival those offered by competitors.

Strengthening AWS’s Role in the AI Race

DeSantis previously served as senior vice president of utility computing, overseeing much of AWS’s engineering organization. In his new role, he will report directly to Jassy, reflecting the strategic importance Amazon places on AI as a core driver of future growth. Jassy highlighted DeSantis’s experience in tackling complex technical challenges, positioning him as a key figure in guiding Amazon through what the CEO described as a technological inflection point.

While AWS remains the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure, it has faced growing pressure to establish similar leadership in AI services, as Microsoft leverages its OpenAI partnership and Google advances its own AI ecosystem. Folding Annapurna Labs — the chip-design unit Amazon acquired in 2015 — into the AI organization underscores Amazon’s belief that custom silicon and infrastructure control are critical to competing at scale.

Leadership Transitions and Strategic Focus

The reshuffle also marks a leadership transition within Amazon’s AI ranks. Rohit Prasad, head of the AGI unit and a longtime leader behind Alexa’s speech and language technologies, will depart the company at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon following its acquisition of robotics software firm Covariant, will take charge of teams developing Amazon’s foundational AI models.

Taken together, the changes highlight Amazon’s effort to sharpen execution, reduce internal fragmentation, and bring its AI ambitions closer to its core cloud and hardware capabilities. As competition intensifies and AI investment accelerates across the tech sector, Amazon’s latest move signals that it intends to play a more integrated and aggressive role in shaping the next phase of artificial intelligence.