Meta is replacing a longtime infrastructure executive with a former Amazon Web Services leader as the social media company expands its data center capacity to support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, will leave the company in early 2027, according to a Wednesday (Nov. 11) report by CNBC. Janardhan, who joined Facebook in 2009, told employees in an internal memo that it was time to pass leadership to David Brown, a former senior vice president at Amazon Web Services who joined Meta in July.
Brown will formally oversee Meta’s infrastructure operations and serve as chief technology officer of Meta Compute, an initiative led by Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick and technical leader Daniel Gross. Janardhan will remain with the company through the first quarter of 2027 to support the transition.
The executive change comes as Meta undertakes an aggressive expansion of the computing infrastructure needed to develop and deploy AI models. The company said during its third-quarter earnings report that it expects 2026 capital expenditures of $135 billion to $145 billion, reflecting investments in data centers, computing equipment and supporting infrastructure.
Meta also reported negative free cash flow of $2.12 billion for the third quarter. S&P Global Ratings cited the company’s cash flow performance in October when it revised Meta’s credit rating outlook from stable to negative.
Brown brings nearly two decades of cloud computing experience at AWS, where he oversaw compute and machine learning services. His appointment comes as Meta explores the possibility of turning its expanding infrastructure into a commercial cloud computing business, potentially offering outside customers access to computing capacity and AI services.
The transition places a veteran cloud infrastructure executive in charge of one of the technology industry’s largest AI infrastructure investments, as Meta works to translate its spending into computing capacity and new business opportunities.
The infrastructure transition follows another high-profile executive departure at Meta. Chief Strategy Officer Dave Wehner announced earlier this month that he was leaving the company to become CFO of Fireworks, an AI training and inference startup.
For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.
