Meta's long-time infrastructure leader will leave the company in the new year, setting the stage for a recently hired former Amazon Web Services executive to oversee its massive data center technical operations.
Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, revealed his upcoming departure on Wednesday in an internal memo obtained by CNBC. Janardhan, who has worked at Meta since 2009, said "it's time to pass the baton" to former AWS senior vice president David Brown, who joined Meta in July from AWS.
The executive move underscores Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to expand the company's data center operations under newer leaders at a time of increasing investor scrutiny on capital expenditure spending by the social media giant and its hyperscaler rivals.
Brown will now formally lead Meta's infrastructure efforts and serve as chief technical officer of the Meta Compute initiative, which is spearheaded by the company's president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick and technical leader Daniel Gross. Zuckerberg is relying on these new executives to continue developing cutting-edge data centers and related infrastructure needed to support its AI ambitions.
The company said during its recent third-quarter earnings report that it expects full-year capex to fall in the range of $135 billion to $145 billion. Meta also logged negative free cash flow of $2.12 billion, which S&P Global Ratings noted as part of its decision in late October to revise Meta's credit rating from AA- stable to AA- negative.