Boston Dynamics names ex-Amazon AI chief Rohit Prasad CEO

Rohit Prasad, Amazon's former senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa and artificial general intelligence, takes over as chief executive of Boston Dynamics effective October 7, becoming the Hyundai-owned robot maker's third CEO. Bloomberg reported the appointment on October 6.

He fills a seat that has been empty in all but title since February, when former CEO Robert Playter stepped down and chief financial officer Amanda McMaster took over on an interim basis.

In the company's announcement, Prasad framed the job as a scaling problem: "Boston Dynamics is uniquely positioned to advance Physical AI through its world-class robotics expertise. I am honored to join the company at such a pivotal moment for the industry." Jaehoon Chang, Vice Chair of Hyundai Motor Group and chair of Boston Dynamics' board, pointed to "Rohit's proven ability to turn AI into products at global scale."

That product-shipping line is the real signal in the hire. Hyundai, which took majority control of Boston Dynamics in 2021, plans to deploy the Atlas humanoid at its Georgia manufacturing facility starting in 2028 and build capacity to produce up to 30,000 humanoids annually. Prasad spent 12 years at Amazon helping grow Alexa into hundreds of millions of households and more recently oversaw the Nova foundation-model family. The industrial robotics résumé is thinner, but Hyundai is betting the Atlas program now needs an operator with foundation-model and scale-manufacturing instincts more than another roboticist.