Meta Infrastructure Chief Janardhan to Leave in Early 2027
Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure, will depart in early 2027. Dave Brown, a former AWS executive, is set to take over.
Meta Platforms said Santosh Janardhan, its head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, will leave the company early next year, with Dave Brown, a former Amazon Web Services executive, set to succeed him. The change was first reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, citing an internal memo, and was confirmed by the company in a statement to Reuters.
What happened
According to Reuters, Meta said on Wednesday that Janardhan “will leave the company early next year.” Bloomberg reported that he will stay through the first quarter of 2027 to help with the handover and did not give a reason for leaving in his message to staff. CNBC, which also obtained the memo, said Janardhan has worked at Meta since 2009.
CNBC reported that Janardhan wrote it was “time to pass the baton” and that Brown has “the instincts, depth and judgment this moment requires.” The Next Web quoted a line it attributed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the memo saying Janardhan had “built a strong team that can carry this work forward.”
Brown, a former senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing unit, joined Meta in 2026 after nearly two decades at Amazon. Reuters described his current title as vice president of infrastructure. CNBC said he will formally lead Meta’s infrastructure efforts.
Why it matters
Infrastructure is central to Meta’s artificial intelligence plans. CNBC reported that the company projected full-year capital expenditures of $135 billion to $145 billion in its latest quarterly report, and that investors are watching spending by Meta and other large cloud companies closely. CNBC also noted that Meta posted negative free cash flow of $2.12 billion in the quarter and that S&P Global Ratings revised its outlook on Meta to negative in late October while keeping its AA- rating.
Meta Compute is an initiative to secure and build computing capacity for AI. CNBC said it is led by Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president and vice chairman, and Daniel Gross, a technical leader at the company. The Next Web reported that Janardhan became a co-lead of the group in January 2026.
The Next Web also reported that Meta has explored renting out spare computing capacity and that Joel Kaplan, the company’s policy chief, is also set to leave in 2027. Those details come from a single outlet in this reporting and were not confirmed by the other sources reviewed.
What comes next
The outlets differ on one point. CNBC reported that Brown will serve as chief technology officer of Meta Compute. The Next Web reported that Janardhan will advise as chief technology officer of Meta Compute after the handover. Meta has not publicly clarified the discrepancy in the reports reviewed.
It is also not yet known why Janardhan is leaving, whether he has another job lined up, or the exact date of his exit beyond “early 2027.” Neither CNBC nor Reuters reported any further comment from Janardhan beyond the memo.
