Karthik Ramakrishnan steps down as Amazon VP of Artificial General Intelligence
Other notable departures include Vasi Philomin, a Vice President who led Amazon’s generative AI initiatives, and Jon Jones, who oversaw AWS’s global startups and venture capital business.
ADVERTISEMENT
Karthik Ramakrishnan, who served as Vice President of Artificial General Intelligence at Amazon, has stepped down from his role. His departure adds to a growing list of high-profile exits from the company in recent months.
Other notable departures include Vasi Philomin, a Vice President who led Amazon’s generative AI initiatives, and Jon Jones, who oversaw AWS’s global startups and venture capital business, according to media reports.
Ramakrishnan’s career began at Netscape, followed by roles at Tellme Networks and StoryJumper, where he worked as a software engineer. He later joined Microsoft as a senior platform engineer and went on to contribute as a developer across various startups.
In August, Amazon announced a significant development in its AI strategy by making OpenAI’s latest open-weight models available to customers for the first time. These models, which mimic human reasoning, are capable of handling complex tasks such as coding and online research. They are accessible through Amazon Web Services (AWS) platforms including Bedrock and SageMaker, and are particularly suited for building advanced AI agents.
This move comes amid growing perception that Amazon is lagging behind its Big Tech peers in the AI race. In response, CEO Andy Jassy has been repositioning AWS as a comprehensive hub for AI tools. The Bedrock platform is designed to provide seamless access to a variety of large language models from multiple providers, including Amazon’s own.
In addition to its collaboration with OpenAI, Amazon has made significant investments in Anthropic, a leading AI startup and OpenAI rival. The company has committed up to $8 billion and offers Anthropic’s Claude models to its clients. Anthropic is also preparing to launch a new, more powerful version of its AI model, which is reportedly highly capable in coding, research, and data analysis.
Read More: Amazon Ads VP Krishan Bhatia steps down
