Boston Dynamics Names Former Amazon AI Chief Rohit Prasad CEO
Boston Dynamics named Rohit Prasad, Amazon's former head scientist for Alexa and AGI, as CEO effective October 7. He succeeds interim CEO Amanda McMaster, in place since Robert Playter stepped down in February, as the Hyundai-owned company rolls out commercial Atlas robots.
Boston Dynamics has hired an AI executive, not a robotics one. Prasad spent 12 years at Amazon as senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa and its artificial general intelligence work, after 14 years on machine learning and speech recognition at Raytheon BBN Technologies. The appointment took effect on October 7, per Robotics 24/7, with Hyundai Motor Group vice chair Jaehoon Chang calling it the start of "this exciting new era of real-world Physical AI."
The hardware he inherits holds the highest motion score in this directory. Atlas is being tested at a Hyundai facility in Georgia, the company has announced plans for a factory able to build 30,000 Atlas robots a year, and it plans to deploy Atlas in Hyundai plants from 2028, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. Atlas has no face and no companion pitch, and nothing in the announcement suggests one. The new CEO's background is in the conversational side of AI, the part companion makers depend on most.
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