Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering since 2009, plans to leave the company in early 2027, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC3. He will be succeeded by Dave Brown, a former Amazon Web Services senior vice president who joined Meta in July.
Janardhan said in the memo that it was time to pass the baton. Meta told TechCrunch that Janardhan will stay on for a transition period and move into an advisory role on Meta Compute1. The company did not immediately respond to a request for clarity on the reasons for his departure.
Brown spent 19 years at Amazon, where he focused on compute, cloud, and AI, according to his LinkedIn profile. At Meta, he will lead infrastructure efforts and serve as CTO of the Meta Compute initiative, which is spearheaded by Dina Powell McCormick and Daniel Gross.
CNBC characterized the leadership change as underscoring CEO Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to expand Meta's data center operations under newer leaders at a time of increasing investor scrutiny on capital expenditure spending by Meta and its hyperscaler rivals. Meta's investment in infrastructure has grown as the company seeks to keep pace with competitors in the AI race.
ANALYSIS Installing a nearly two-decade AWS veteran atop Meta's infrastructure organization aligns the company's technical leadership more closely with hyperscale cloud operations expertise as its AI-driven capital spending accelerates.