Jassy taps 27-year Amazon veteran to run AGI org, which is now definitely a thing that exists
(2025/12/17)
- Reference: 1766008494
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/17/jassy_taps_peter_desantis_to_run_agi/
- Source link:
In today's episode of "Amazon Kremlinology," AWS has [1]put out a press release that shows a significant shuffle of one of AWS's most storied leaders.
Two weeks after their announcement of Nova 2 models at AWS re:Invent ("where hope goes to the desert to die"), SVP of Utility Computing Peter DeSantis is taking two of his teams from AWS, putting them into SVP of Doesn't-Work-At-Amazon-As-Of-Next-Month Rohit Prasad's old org, and managing the whole thing as a cohesive unit called "AGI." This unit will report directly to Andy Jassy, Amazon's Lead Product Marketer for GenAI (and also CEO).
The two things Peter's taking along with him are the reworked [2]Annapurna Labs business that makes AWS's silicon chips (Nitro, Graviton, Trainium, and Inferentia), and their quantum computing business, about which companies are very excited but utterly unable to communicate effectively to anyone who's not spent at least four years in a Ph.D. program at Berkeley.
[3]
You have to unpack a bit of history and ad some context to make sense of the rest of it, since this is a very Amazonian announcement. Amazon is much, much, much more than just Amazon.com and AWS: Alexa, Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, Zoox, Amazon Ads, and the AGI team, to name a few.
[4]
[5]
The message here is that AI and AI-related compute should not be an AWS only thing, but rather is an all-Amazon thing. In other words, Andy Jassy believes that this unit is building things that either are or will become so important that they're taking one of our most senior AWS leaders and putting him in charge of all of it.
Does moving Peter de Santis out of AWS reflect a lack of confidence in Matt Garman?
[6]
No, because the org that Peter is taking over already existed; now he's getting a larger scope by taking it over and bringing other things with him in a way that's far more strategically important and visible than Utility Computing alone.
Where have I heard the vertical integration story before?
Jassy specifically calls out "the advantages of optimizing across models, chips, and cloud software and infrastructure." This is the Apple playbook for AI – if you control the silicon and the models together, you can optimize end-to-end in ways that their two closest peer companies cannot: Microsoft because they buy from Nvidia, and Google because their TPU and model teams exist in parallel universes that occasionally exchange passive-aggressive emails like my extended family. That's the strategic bet that Amazon is making here.
[7]
Why is quantum computing being bundled with AI?
Fascinating, isn't it? Quantum computing is a decade-out bet at minimum, which is a statement that remains as true today as it was in the 1990s. Grouping it with "things that need Peter DeSantis's technical depth to shepherd for the long haul" suggests this org is explicitly about strategic patience, not quarterly results. That may be one of the most encouraging signs I've seen from Amazon in a while; long-term thinking is where they're at their best.
What's the sleeper story here?
Jassy's memo specifically names Pieter Abbeel as the new head of the frontier model research team (the base model builders) within AGI. Abbeel's a [8]legitimate AI researcher who came over when Amazon acqui-hired Covariant last year. He's continuing to work with the robotics team as well as leading frontier models.
It's easy to dismiss Amazon's expression of this as "a pile of unwanted children," but do bear in mind that Amazon has one of the largest deployed robotics fleets on Earth (warehouses). If embodied AI becomes a thing, they have a testing ground that OpenAI and Anthropic can only dream of. That convergence is potentially a tectonic shift that a whole bunch of folks likely won't see coming – if Amazon can pull it off. ®
Get our [9]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/andy-jassy-peter-desantis-amazon-leadership-update
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/04/project_rainier_deep_dive/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aUM2CjnNocGx8l5Ndhf2wwAAANM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aUM2CjnNocGx8l5Ndhf2wwAAANM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/06/2021_acm_computing_prize/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Two weeks after their announcement of Nova 2 models at AWS re:Invent ("where hope goes to the desert to die"), SVP of Utility Computing Peter DeSantis is taking two of his teams from AWS, putting them into SVP of Doesn't-Work-At-Amazon-As-Of-Next-Month Rohit Prasad's old org, and managing the whole thing as a cohesive unit called "AGI." This unit will report directly to Andy Jassy, Amazon's Lead Product Marketer for GenAI (and also CEO).
The two things Peter's taking along with him are the reworked [2]Annapurna Labs business that makes AWS's silicon chips (Nitro, Graviton, Trainium, and Inferentia), and their quantum computing business, about which companies are very excited but utterly unable to communicate effectively to anyone who's not spent at least four years in a Ph.D. program at Berkeley.
[3]
You have to unpack a bit of history and ad some context to make sense of the rest of it, since this is a very Amazonian announcement. Amazon is much, much, much more than just Amazon.com and AWS: Alexa, Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, Zoox, Amazon Ads, and the AGI team, to name a few.
[4]
[5]
The message here is that AI and AI-related compute should not be an AWS only thing, but rather is an all-Amazon thing. In other words, Andy Jassy believes that this unit is building things that either are or will become so important that they're taking one of our most senior AWS leaders and putting him in charge of all of it.
Does moving Peter de Santis out of AWS reflect a lack of confidence in Matt Garman?
[6]
No, because the org that Peter is taking over already existed; now he's getting a larger scope by taking it over and bringing other things with him in a way that's far more strategically important and visible than Utility Computing alone.
Where have I heard the vertical integration story before?
Jassy specifically calls out "the advantages of optimizing across models, chips, and cloud software and infrastructure." This is the Apple playbook for AI – if you control the silicon and the models together, you can optimize end-to-end in ways that their two closest peer companies cannot: Microsoft because they buy from Nvidia, and Google because their TPU and model teams exist in parallel universes that occasionally exchange passive-aggressive emails like my extended family. That's the strategic bet that Amazon is making here.
[7]
Why is quantum computing being bundled with AI?
Fascinating, isn't it? Quantum computing is a decade-out bet at minimum, which is a statement that remains as true today as it was in the 1990s. Grouping it with "things that need Peter DeSantis's technical depth to shepherd for the long haul" suggests this org is explicitly about strategic patience, not quarterly results. That may be one of the most encouraging signs I've seen from Amazon in a while; long-term thinking is where they're at their best.
What's the sleeper story here?
Jassy's memo specifically names Pieter Abbeel as the new head of the frontier model research team (the base model builders) within AGI. Abbeel's a [8]legitimate AI researcher who came over when Amazon acqui-hired Covariant last year. He's continuing to work with the robotics team as well as leading frontier models.
It's easy to dismiss Amazon's expression of this as "a pile of unwanted children," but do bear in mind that Amazon has one of the largest deployed robotics fleets on Earth (warehouses). If embodied AI becomes a thing, they have a testing ground that OpenAI and Anthropic can only dream of. That convergence is potentially a tectonic shift that a whole bunch of folks likely won't see coming – if Amazon can pull it off. ®
Get our [9]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/andy-jassy-peter-desantis-amazon-leadership-update
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/04/project_rainier_deep_dive/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aUM2CjnNocGx8l5Ndhf2wwAAANM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aUM2CjnNocGx8l5Ndhf2wwAAANM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/06/2021_acm_computing_prize/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Why is quantum computing being bundled with AI?
To keep all the bullshit under one roof.