Boston Dynamics has named Rohit Prasad, the former Amazon executive who led its Alexa and artificial general intelligence efforts, as chief executive effective Wednesday, The Robot Report reported Tuesday. The appointment ends a nine-month stretch in which the company's finance chief ran it on an interim basis.

What Happened

Prasad spent 12 years at Amazon as senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa and AGI. He helped build the Alexa voice assistant and led development of Amazon's Nova family of foundation models. Before Amazon, he spent nearly 14 years at Raytheon BBN Technologies, where he directed machine-learning research for government and commercial clients.

He succeeds Robert Playter, who stepped down as CEO in February after leading the company since 2020. Chief Financial Officer Amanda McMaster served as interim CEO during the search. Prasad becomes the third CEO in Boston Dynamics' history, after founder Marc Raibert, who led the company from 1992 to 2020, and Playter.

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Hyundai Motor Group has held a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics since 2021. Jaehoon Chang, a Hyundai vice chair who chairs the robot maker's board, pointed to Prasad's record of turning AI into products at global scale and said that, combined with Boston Dynamics' robotics and Hyundai's manufacturing base, it gives the company a strong foundation.

Prasad said he plans to turn intelligent robotic systems into products that improve safety, productivity and efficiency in industrial and commercial settings.

Why It Matters

The choice says a lot about where Boston Dynamics sees its advantage. The company has long been known for the mechanical feats of robots such as Spot and Atlas. Its new leader comes from large-scale AI models and consumer voice software, not hardware.

That reflects a wider shift in robotics, where makers of humanoid and general-purpose robots are racing to pair foundation-model AI with physical machines. In that race, the ability to train models, gather data and ship software updates at scale increasingly matters alongside mechanical engineering.

What He Inherits

The Robot Report pointed to several recent product moves. Atlas has a new four-fingered hand designed for simulation and for reinforcement learning that transfers from simulation to the real world. Spot 5.2 adds support for agentic workflows, and the company's Orbit AIVI inspection software is now powered by Google's Gemini models.

Boston Dynamics has also opened an application center at Hyundai's Metaplant in Georgia to work on bringing Atlas into car production, and it plans to spend $100 million expanding its facilities in Waltham, Massachusetts.

What to Watch

Early signals will include Prasad's first strategy and leadership changes, timelines for putting Atlas to work on Hyundai production lines and how much of the company's software is built on in-house models versus partners such as Google. Observers will also watch whether Hyundai seeks outside investment for the unit as rivals in humanoid robotics raise large rounds.