Rohit Prasad: From building Alexa to leading Boston Dynamics’ robotics revolution

From Ranchi to the forefront of artificial intelligence in the US, the engineer who helped bring Amazon’s Alexa into hundreds of millions of households has now joined Boston Dynamics as CEO, leading its efforts to bring intelligent robots into the physical world. A TIME100 AI honouree in 2024, Rohit Prasad’s new role marks another chapter in a career spanning speech technology, conversational AI and advanced foundation models.

When Rohit Prasad joined Amazon in 2013, conversational artificial intelligence was still an ambitious technological undertaking. Over the next 12 years, he helped develop and scale Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based assistant, into a technology used in hundreds of millions of households. He subsequently led the development of Amazon Nova, the company’s family of foundation models designed for applications ranging from enterprise AI to other intelligent services.

Now, Rohit is taking on a different challenge. Boston Dynamics, the leading robotics company in the US owned by Hyundai Motor Group, appointed him chief executive officer, effective October 7, 2026. His appointment brings an AI specialist with experience taking complex technologies into widespread use to a company known for developing robots with remarkable mobility, dexterity and agility.

The move also reflects a growing focus on what the industry calls Physical AI, which combines artificial intelligence with robotic systems that can perceive their surroundings, make decisions and act in the real world.

Boston Dynamics is developing robots for industrial, enterprise and other real-world environments. Its portfolio includes Spot, the four-legged robot; Stretch, designed for warehouse operations; and Atlas, its humanoid robot. The challenge ahead is not simply to build machines that can move, but to equip them with the intelligence and adaptability needed to perform useful tasks outside controlled laboratory settings.

For Rohit Prasad, this is an opportunity to extend the possibilities of AI beyond screens, speakers and digital interfaces.

I am honored to be joining at a pivotal moment for Physical AI, when there’s a massive opportunity to deliver real-world impact with intelligent robotic systems.

Rohit Prasad said in a LinkedIn post following his appointment at Boston Dynamics

He also acknowledged the company’s legacy and its evolution from a research laboratory into a commercial enterprise, adding that he had watched and admired its growth during his more than 25 years in the Boston area.

His priorities include working with customers to solve difficult problems, collaborating with industry partners and working with the Hyundai Motor Group network to scale manufacturing. The combination of advanced AI, established robotics expertise and manufacturing capacity will be central to Boston Dynamics’ efforts to bring more capable robots into practical use.

From Ranchi to the American AI frontier

Rohit’s journey began in Ranchi, Jharkhand, where he completed his schooling at DAV and earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi in 1997.

He then moved to the US to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, completing it in 1999. His research focused on low-bit-rate speech coding for wireless applications, laying an academic foundation for his subsequent work in speech recognition and language technologies.

Before joining Amazon, he spent nearly 14 years at BBN Technologies, an advanced research and development organisation later acquired by Raytheon. He progressed through scientific and leadership roles, eventually becoming deputy manager and senior director of its Speech, Language and Multimedia business unit. His work covered areas including speech recognition, speech-to-speech translation, natural language processing and machine learning.

This experience gave him a foundation in technologies that enable machines to interpret human communication. It would become particularly relevant when he joined Amazon in 2013 as director of machine learning for Alexa.

The scientist behind Alexa

Alexa’s development involved much more than giving a device a voice. The technology needed to recognise speech, understand what people meant, interpret requests and respond in ways that were useful in everyday life.

As director of machine learning, Rohit led teams working on speech recognition, natural language understanding and machine learning. He subsequently became vice president and head scientist of Alexa AI, overseeing research in conversational AI, dialogue systems and machine reasoning.

In 2021, he became senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, leading multidisciplinary teams across product development, engineering, science and operations. During his tenure, Alexa expanded across hundreds of millions of households and became integrated into hundreds of millions of first- and third-party endpoints. In an interview with Amazon News in 2022 he had mentioned:

When we first launched Alexa, customers could use the service to do only a handful of things, like play music and set timers and alarms. Today, you can use it to control your smart home, watch videos and shows, shop, learn about any topic, and do much more with more than 130,000 skills available to our customers. All of this is made possible by Alexa’s AI, which is one of the most complex AI systems with over 30 different machine learning systems. A key reason for this growth is not just how much better Alexa has gotten in responding to customer requests, but also how Alexa initiates actions on customers’ behalf, which we refer to as proactive assistance.

Rohit Prasad

In 2023, he moved into a broader role as senior vice president and head scientist for artificial general intelligence at Amazon. He led the development of Amazon Nova, the company’s family of foundation models used in Amazon Bedrock and internal applications.

The progression from speech technologies to conversational AI and foundation models illustrates the breadth of his work. Rather than concentrating on a single application, Rohit has worked across several layers of the AI ecosystem, from the scientific research that enables machines to interpret language to the engineering and product development required to deliver these capabilities at scale.

His contributions earned him a place on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI list in 2024. The recognition came during his tenure leading Amazon’s AI organisation, as the company expanded its work on large language models and artificial general intelligence.

From conversational intelligence to physical intelligence

The transition to Boston Dynamics brings together two fields that have developed along different paths. Conversational AI enables machines to process language, respond to questions and assist with digital tasks. Robotics requires systems to interpret physical environments, coordinate movement and carry out actions amid changing conditions.

Boston Dynamics has spent decades developing the mechanisms, sensors, control systems and computational capabilities that allow its robots to navigate demanding environments. Integrating more advanced AI into these systems creates opportunities for robots to respond more intelligently to real-world situations.

Rohit Prasad’s appointment comes as Hyundai Motor Group pushes to expand the commercial application of robotics, including plans to scale production of humanoid robots and deploy them in manufacturing environments.

A new chapter

Reflecting on his departure from Amazon, Rohit described Alexa as an idea that once seemed almost impossible, but was worth pursuing. Over 12 years, he worked with teams that turned that ambition into a widely used conversational AI platform.

At Boston Dynamics, the ambition is different, but the underlying challenge is familiar: making advanced technology useful in people’s lives.

Rohit Prasad noted in a LinkedIn post following his appointment at Boston Dynamics

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Boston Dynamics (@bostondynamicsofficial)

Boston Dynamics’s robots are designed to undertake tasks in environments where mobility, dexterity and adaptability matter. As AI capabilities advance, the opportunity is to make these machines more responsive to their surroundings and more effective at carrying out real-world work.

Rohit’s appointment places an India-born scientist at the helm of a company seeking to shape that future, extending a career built around turning difficult technological ideas into practical applications.

• Follow Rohit Prasad on LinkedIn

ALSO READ:Adobe Names Anil Chakravarthy as Next CEO, Replacing Shantanu Narayen