Meta's long-time infrastructure head Santosh Janardhan is stepping down

Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering who has been with the company since 2009, is stepping down from his role. According to CNBC, Janardhan announced his upcoming departure in an internal memo on Wednesday, stating it is time to pass the baton. Dave Brown, a former Amazon executive who joined Meta earlier this year as vice president of infrastructure, will replace Janardhan. Brown previously spent 19 years at Amazon focusing on compute, cloud, and artificial intelligence, and will now oversee Meta's massive data center technical operations and serve as chief technical officer of the Meta Compute initiative. Janardhan will remain at the company through the first quarter of 2027 to help support Brown through the transition, and will briefly move into an advisory role on Meta Compute. Bloomberg originally reported the executive change after obtaining the internal memo, which did not specify reasons for the departure beyond the need to pass the baton.

Context

Meta has significantly increased its spending on data centers and technical infrastructure in recent years to compete in the artificial intelligence race against rival tech companies. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is relying on newer leaders to expand these operations amid heavy capital expenditures and growing investor scrutiny.