— Karthik Ramakrishnan, who spent the previous 14 years at Amazon the place he helped develop the corporate’s AI technique, has taken a VP function throughout the Knowledge Cloud group at Google Cloud.
“We’re coming into the ‘Agentic Period,’ and my focus helps this world-class workforce construct the autonomous knowledge platform of the longer term,” Ramakrishnan wrote on LinkedIn. “I can’t wait to dive again into the ‘laborious issues’ and see what we are able to construct collectively subsequent.”
Ramakrishnan helped launch Amazon Alexa and develop the Amazon Nova basis fashions. “My work at Amazon spanned the total evolution from conversational AI to multi-modal AGI,” he notes on his LinkedIn profile. Earlier than becoming a member of Amazon in 2012, Ramakrishnan spent three years at Microsoft following the corporate’s acquisition of Tellme Networks, the place he was a senior platform engineer.
Ramakrishnan’s transfer to Google comes amid a shake-up inside Amazon’s AI unit — together with the latest departure of Rohit Prasad, the chief who led Amazon’s AI initiatives and overseen the creation of its homegrown Nova AI fashions.
In a memo despatched Dec. 17, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy named Peter DeSantis, a 27-year firm veteran and high cloud infrastructure govt, to guide a brand new group that mixes its Nova and mannequin analysis groups with customized silicon and quantum computing.
Amazon final month unveiled its Nova 2 fashions at its annual re:Invent convention. The corporate is trying to shut the hole with AI rivals together with OpenAI and Google within the race to develop more and more succesful AI techniques.
— C.J. Mahoney, a company vp and high authorized govt at Microsoft, joined Meta as its new chief authorized officer. Axios first reported the transfer.
Mahoney spent the previous 5 years at Microsoft, first as a deputy common counsel centered on worldwide commerce and Azure, then later as a company vp and common counsel for product, providers, and go-to-market authorized. He beforehand was a deputy U.S. commerce consultant from 2018 to 2020 throughout President Trump’s first time period.
Mahoney replaces Jennifer Newstead, who departed for the final counsel function at Apple.
Microsoft promoted longtime exec Jonathan Palmer to chief authorized officer in September, following the departure of Hossein Nowbar, who’s at ServiceNow as president and chief authorized officer.
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