Boston Dynamics taps ex-Amazon AI chief as new CEO

Boston Dynamics, a U.S. robot maker owned by Hyundai Motor, named Rohit Prasad, who led AI development at Amazon, as its new CEO.

The appointment is effective from Wednesday.

At Boston Dynamics, Prasad will lead the acceleration of the deployment of intelligent robots at industrial sites, as well as their commercialization.

The company has commercialized a four-legged robot dog and has announced plans to deploy its humanoid robot Atlas at Hyundai Motor’s manufacturing plants starting in 2028.

The robot maker is also reportedly planning an initial public offering next year.

As the head scientist for Alexa and the Artificial General Intelligence division at Amazon, Prasad spent 12 years spearheading building the virtual assistant from its earliest days. 

More recently, he led the development of the Amazon Nova foundation model family used by enterprises. 

Before Amazon, Prasad also spent nearly 14 years at Raytheon BBN Technologies, a machine-learning research and its real-world application for U.S. government and commercial use.

BY SARAH CHEA [[email protected]]