TLDR
- Dave Brown, a senior VP at Amazon Web Services, is leaving after nearly 19 years to join Meta Platforms in the coming weeks.
- Brown will report to Meta’s head of infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan, and focus on data center build-out.
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg flagged cloud computing as “definitely on the table” at the May shareholder meeting.
- Meta is budgeting $125B–$145B in capital expenditures this year, largely for AI data centers.
- The move is part of Meta’s broader “Meta Compute” initiative, targeting hundreds of gigawatts of computing capacity.
Meta Platforms (META) stock fell 5.40% as news broke that the company is making another big infrastructure hire — poaching one of Amazon’s most senior cloud executives.
Dave Brown, a senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and a member of Amazon’s elite S-team, will leave the company at the end of July after nearly 19 years. He is set to join Meta in the coming weeks.
Brown will report to Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure, and focus on the company’s data center build-out. AWS chief Matt Garman confirmed Brown’s departure in an internal memo Wednesday, without naming his destination.
Meta declined to comment.
The hire comes as Meta ramps up its cloud ambitions. At the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said launching a cloud business is “definitely on the table.”
He noted that companies were approaching Meta “almost every week” seeking access to its AI models or to pay a premium for spare computing capacity.
“We haven’t done that yet because we think that we have a use for the compute, but obviously if we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta Compute: The Initiative Behind the Hiring Push
In January, Zuckerberg launched a top-level initiative called Meta Compute, aimed at building hundreds of gigawatts of computing capacity over time.
The initiative is led by Janardhan and Daniel Gross, who joined Meta in 2025. Dina Powell McCormick, who joined as president and vice chairman in January, is focused on partnering with governments to build data centers globally.
Meta has also hired two former OpenAI infrastructure executives as part of the same effort.
Brown is the latest in a string of high-profile infrastructure hires as Meta looks to accelerate AI development and lock in computing capacity at scale.
A Spending Commitment to Match
Meta has committed to spending between $125 billion and $145 billion in capital expenditures in 2025, with a large chunk directed at AI data centers.
That level of spend puts Meta alongside Amazon and Microsoft as one of the biggest spenders on AI infrastructure globally.
For context, AWS generated $37.6 billion in revenue in Q1 2026, up 28% year over year — the division Brown is leaving behind.
Brown’s near two-decade tenure at AWS included overseeing major areas of the cloud division’s operations, making him one of the most experienced infrastructure executives in the industry.
Meta earlier this month was reported to be building a cloud business to generate revenue from excess computing power — a direct play at the enterprise cloud market AWS currently dominates.
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