Google has created a new senior leadership role focused on AI infrastructure and appointed Amin Vahdat as its first chief technologist for AI infrastructure, according to a memo first reported by Semafor and confirmed by TechCrunch. The move reflects how central large-scale compute systems have become as Google prepares to spend up to $93bn on capital expenditures by the end of 2025, with parent company Alphabet indicating next year’s investment will be significantly higher.
Vahdat’s Background and Long Tenure Building Google’s AI Systems
Vahdat, a computer scientist with a PhD from UC Berkeley, has spent 15 years shaping Google’s data center and AI foundations. He joined the company in 2010 as an engineering fellow and vice president after academic roles at Duke University and UC San Diego, where he held the SAIC Chair. With roughly 395 published research papers, his career has focused on improving computing efficiency at large scale.
In April, during Google Cloud Next, Vahdat presented Google’s seventh-generation TPU, Ironwood, in his role as VP and GM of ML, Systems and Cloud AI. He said each pod contains more than 9,000 chips delivering 42.5 exaflops of compute — over 24 times the performance of the world’s top supercomputer at the time. “Demand for AI compute has increased by a factor of 100 million in just eight years,” he said at the event.
Work Behind Google’s Custom Chips, Networks and Data Center Systems
Vahdat has been involved in developing Google’s custom TPU hardware used for AI training and inference, a core element of the company’s competitive position against firms such as OpenAI. He has also overseen the Jupiter data center network, which Vahdat wrote last year now scales to 13 petabits per second — capacity he described as enough to support a simultaneous video call for all 8 billion people on Earth.
His work extends to Borg, Google’s cluster management system that coordinates workloads across Google’s global data centers, and Axion, the company’s first custom Arm-based general-purpose CPUs for data centers. Google unveiled Axion last year and continues to expand its development.
Strategic and Organisational Implications
Vahdat’s appointment places him in a newly created position reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. Semafor noted that the move highlights both the importance of AI infrastructure at a moment of intense industry competition and the need to retain high-profile technical leaders. In an environment where top AI talent receives extensive recruitment attention and high compensation, Vahdat’s expanded leadership role signals Google’s commitment to securing continuity in its long-term AI roadmap.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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