From AWS’ new agentic AI leader to the departure of its vice president of AI sales, here are five blockbuster AWS executive departures and hires in 2026.
Amazon Web Services has lost several high-profile AI executives in 2026, including its agentic AI R&D leader as well as its vice president of AI sales.
The $142 billion cloud leader has also hired some top-notch talent such as its new vice president of agentic AI who was a founding member of Microsoft Teams.
CRN breaks down five of the most important AWS executive hires and AWS departures this year. Before jumping into each executive, let’s take a quick look at the world’s leading cloud company’s recent financial earnings results.
[Related: Drone Strikes Hit AWS Data Centers ‘Due To’ Middle East Conflict, Amazon Confirms]
AWS Q4 2025 Earnings Results
AWS generated $35.6 billion in total sales during the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a 24 percent increase year over year.
Seattle-based AWS captured $12.5 billion in operating income for Q4 2025 representing a growth increase of 17 percent year over year.
The Amazon cloud computing unit’s annual run rate (ARR) is now $142 billion.
As of Q4 2025, AWS is the world’s largest cloud company, owning 28 percent share of the global cloud infrastructure services market, followed by Microsoft at 21 percent share, then Google at 13 percent global cloud market share.
Here are five huge hires and executive departures at AWS in 2026 that you should know about.
AWS Departure
David Luan
Former AWS Position: Vice President, Head of Artificial General Intelligence Lab and Agentic AI R&D
New Position: Unknown
The head of Amazon’s artificial general intelligence (AGI) lab and agentic AI R&D, David Luan, left Amazon in March.
Luan departed after less than two years following Amazon hiring Luan and his team from Adept AI Labs. Amazon hired former Adept CEO Luan along with other Adept co-founders including Augustus Odena, Kelsey Szot and other employees in June 2024.
Amazon’s AGI Lab recently released Amazon’s Nova Act agent, which competes against AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude.
Amazon’s AGI Lab consists of researchers, engineers, designers and product innovators who focus on building useful AI agents, specializing in long-term AI research innovation.
Luan is also the former director of engineering for OpenAI and helped create GPT, the company’s blockbuster AI technology.
“This wasn’t an easy decision, and I’m sad to leave this wonderful team,” Luan said.
Luan has not unveiled his next role. “I’ll be leaving Amazon at the end of this week to cook up something new,” he recently said on LinkedIn.
AWS New Hire
Jigar Thakkar
New AWS Position: Vice President of Agentic AI for Business
Former Position:
AWS has hired Microsoft Teams’ founding member and Microsoft innovator Jigar Thakkar as the leader of its new Amazon Quick Suite product.
The 19-year Microsoft executive was a founding member of Microsoft Teams and helped lead Skype for Business engineering as corporate vice president.
Thakkar joined Microsoft in 1999 and quickly became a software development lead for Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. In 2015, Thakkar became Microsoft’s engineering leader and founding member of Microsoft Teams.
As the new vice president of Agentic AI for Business and Amazon Quick Suite, Thakkar will lead AWS’ team in building out a portfolio of agentic applications and services designed for business users.
“What truly sets Amazon apart is its ‘Day 1’ culture, a rare blend of massive operational resources and a nimble, builder-centric mindset that enables you to move fast as a single threaded leader of the business,” said Thakkar in a blog post in February.
“For a project as transformative as Quick Suite, there is no better place to turn the promise of agentic AI into a scalable reality than the company that fundamentally built the first cloud at scale as we know it,” he said.
AWS Departure
Bryan Davis
Former AWS Position: Director of Financial Services, AWS Global Sales
New Position: Ab Initio Software
Bryan Davis, AWS director of financial services for North America and leader of AWS global sales, has left the cloud market share leader this year to join Ab Initio Software.
“My time with AWS was fulfilling beyond belief as we worked hard, had fun and made history,” Davis said on LinkedIn in January.
Davis was a nine-year AWS executive responsible for leading and developing North American sales and go-to-market for the AWS insurance customer base. He was selected by AWS to ring the closing bell for the Nasdaq stock market in January 2024.
Davis was also responsible for AWS’ financial services organization development and execution of strategic priorities and initiatives.
Davis joined Lexington, Mass.-based Ab Initio Software this year in an executive role.
“Enterprise customers consistently share the same challenge: trying to leverage AI without a solid data foundation,” he said on LinkedIn in Febrauray. “This new [Google Cloud and Ab Initio Software] partnership helps reduce data complexity while maintaining quality and governance, unlocking the full potential of agentic AI.”
AWS New Hire
Chet Kapoor
New AWS Position: Vice President of Cybersecurity Services And Observability
Former Position: DataStax CEO And Chairman
AWS has hired former DataStax CEO Chet Kapoor as its new vice president of cybersecurity services and observability to elevate security in its ever-growing AI portfolio.
Kapoor has had a stellar IT career and was the former CEO of DataStax, which was acquired by IBM in 2025.
He was also the former CEO of Apigee, an innovative API management and predictive analytics software provider, which Google acquired for $625 million in 2016.
“With a distinguished career in technology leadership, Chet brings extensive experience in AI, platform services and enterprise solutions,” said AWS CEO Matt Garman in an email to employees announcing Kapoor’s hiring. “While [at DataStax], he pioneered the development of Astra DB and integrated real-time AI capabilities, revolutionizing how companies build and deploy AI-powered applications at scale.”
Kapoor also has held top executive roles at IBM, Gluecode Software and BEA Systems. He was CEO of Gluecode when IBM acquired it in 2005.
AWS Departure
Scott Rosecrans
Former AWS Position: Vice President of AI Sales and Strategic Pursuits
New Position: OpenAI, Vice President of Strategic Pursuits
AWS lost its vice president of AI sales Scott Rosecrans this year who left for AI startup superstar OpenAI.
“It is clear that enterprises worldwide trust OpenAI to be their partner in closing the AI capabilities gap and bringing tangible, real world solutions to market that driver real ROI,” Rosecrans said on LinkedIn this year.
Rosecrans is now OpenAI’s vice president of strategic pursuits.
Interestingly, Amazon and OpenAI formed a stronger strategic partnership in 2026.
“In the last couple years when I was at AWS, the No. 1 question I would always get is, ‘When are OpenAI models going to be available on Bedrock?’ Well now it’s here,” Rosecrans said in late February when the two companies unveiled a revamped partnership. “Excited to get to work with my former friends and colleagues from AWS again and even more excited to see what customers build next.”
The OpenAI and Amazon partnership includes Amazon investing $50 billion into OpenAI, along with the development of customized models and integrated infrastructure.
