Meta's longtime infrastructure chief Santosh Janardhan to step down in 2027: Report

Detailed summary

Santosh Janardhan will leave Meta in early 2027 after more than 17 years. Dave Brown will take operational charge as the company sharply expands AI infrastructure spending.

Meta's longtime infrastructure chief Santosh Janardhan is set to leave the company in early 2027, ending a more than 17-year stint, according to Bloomberg. During his tenure, he helped build the hardware, data centres and computing infrastructure that supported the social media giant's expansion.

The leadership change comes at a critical moment for Meta. The company is pouring unprecedented sums into artificial intelligence, building specialised data centres, custom chips and high-performance networks to keep pace in the race for generative AI.

Janardhan, who also serves as co-head of engineering, will remain with Meta through the first quarter of 2027 to oversee the transition, according to an internal memo cited by Bloomberg. He will subsequently advise the company as chief technology officer of Meta Compute.

Janardhan joined Facebook in October 2009 and went on to become one of the key executives behind the infrastructure supporting Meta's global operations. Over the years, his responsibilities expanded beyond traditional infrastructure management to include hardware networks, custom silicon programmes and the company's sprawling data-centre network.

In his staff memo, Janardhan highlighted how infrastructure had evolved from a support function into a central competitive advantage for Meta. His departure therefore comes at a sensitive point for the company, as computing capacity has become one of the biggest factors determining how quickly Meta can develop and deploy AI products.

Meta has not indicated that Janardhan's departure is linked to any specific dispute or strategic disagreement. He did not provide a reason for leaving in the memo, according to Bloomberg.

Dave Brown, who joined Meta earlier this year as vice president of infrastructure, will take over the operational leadership of the division. Brown brings nearly two decades of experience at Amazon Web Services, where he most recently served as senior vice president overseeing compute and machine-learning…

Tha…

Opening of the article, excerpted from India Today. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.