Meta's longtime infrastructure chief to step down in early 2027
Meta said its longtime head of infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan, will leave early next year, with former Amazon Web Services executive Dave Brown taking over the team that builds Meta's data centers.
What happened
Meta said on Wednesday that its longtime head of infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan, will leave the company early next year. Dave Brown, a former Amazon Web Services senior vice president, will succeed him as head of infrastructure, Meta said. Bloomberg first reported the departure, citing an internal memo from Janardhan.
Janardhan, who is also co-head of engineering, joined Facebook in 2009 and oversaw the development of the company's infrastructure, including software, hardware, networks, data centers and custom silicon. He did not give a reason for stepping down in the memo. Brown joined Meta earlier this year as vice president of infrastructure after nearly 19 years at Amazon, where he focused on compute, cloud and AI.
- Janardhan at Metasince 2009
- Brown at Amazon Web Services19 years
- Transition supportthrough the first quarter of 2027
- Successor takes overearly 2027
A long handover
Janardhan will remain at Meta through the first quarter of 2027 to support the transition, and will then move into an advisory role as chief technology officer of Meta Compute. Brown will formally lead the infrastructure organization and serve as chief technology officer of Meta Compute, the group that plans how Meta secures computing power for its AI ambitions.
Meta Compute is led alongside Meta president Dina Powell McCormick and technical leader Daniel Gross. The handover covers the team that turns Meta's spending on servers, networking, power and data centers into computing capacity for its AI products and advertising systems.
Why it matters
The change comes as Meta pours record sums into data centers, chips and computing capacity, and the infrastructure chief decides how that buildout is executed. A smooth handover matters because the role spans the physical backbone of Meta's AI push, from data-center construction to the custom silicon that runs its models.
Meta confirmed the succession on Wednesday, and the company said Brown's experience running computing and machine-learning products at Amazon fits the job. This post summarizes reported facts and our view of the risks involved. It is not a forecast and not investment advice.
