Boston Dynamics names Rohit Prasad permanent CEO — the AI-executive hire
From the Robots digest for 2026-10-06
What happened: Boston Dynamics (X, ~3:01 PM ET) + Robot Report (~5:00 PM ET): Rohit Prasad — Amazon's former SVP and head scientist for Alexa and "artificial general intelligence" — is the new CEO, ending the interim-CEO era (Amanda McMaster held it through the World Cup-pitchside marketing run). The company's own framing: "accelerate the integration of AI and robotics and to expand real-world Physical AI applications across industries."
What's genuinely new: the Hyundai-industrial-bet thread (2028 Atlas production, the Georgia RMAC test center, the 13-DOF hand) now runs under an executive whose credential is AI at scale, not robotics hardware — the clearest signal yet that BD sees the race as foundation-model integration. It also resolves the record's standing leadership question, and lands the same week BD's Spot-noted pharma deployments and the Atlas-candor pattern continue.
Watch: whether Prasad re-articulates the Atlas 2028 timeline (his record includes Alexa's big-promises era — the candor-vs-hype balance is the thing to grade); Hyundai's posture; the IPO-chatter layer under new leadership; whether Spot/Atlas get the "physical AI" product framing in the next corporate cycle.
Links: BD on X · Robot Report