Boston Dynamics, a humanoid and industrial robot maker owned by Hyundai, said it has appointed Rohit Prasad as CEO, effective today.
The company hired Prasad for his experience turning physical artificial intelligence breakthroughs into commercial successes. The former Amazon executive helped the e-commerce giant scale Alexa assistant over the past decade and more recently helped develop Nova generative models.
“By bringing together advanced AI and robotics, we can build intelligent systems that create meaningful value in real-world environments, expand the reach of robotics across industries, and shape the next era of Physical AI,” Prasad said in a statement Tuesday.
Before joining Boston Dynamics, Prasad served as senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa and artificial general intelligence at Amazon. He was at the company for 12 years, where he helped build Alexa into a device used in households worldwide. Before that, he spent 14 years at Raytheon BBN Technologies working on machine-learning research for U.S. government and commercial use. Raytheon rebranded to RTX in summer 2023.
Prasad is expected to join Boston Dynamics’ board of directors as soon as the approval process is completed, a spokesperson confirmed via email Wednesday.
His hiring came after a leadership shake-up earlier this year. Former Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter stepped down in February after six years in the role and more than 30 years with the company, according to a report from the Association for Advancing Automation. He led Boston Dynamics’ transition from a research lab to a commercial business, overseeing launches of the Spot quadruped robot, Stretch warehouse bot and Atlas humanoid.
CFO Amanda McMaster acted as interim CEO while the company searched for his replacement.
Shortly after Playter’s departure, Boston Dynamics’ chief operating and chief strategy officers, along with other robotics researchers and senior engineers left the company, Semafor reported in May. Former employees told Semafor that they were under pressure to integrate tens of thousands of working humanoids into Hyundai’s automotive plants over the next few years.
Hyundai became the sole owner of Boston Dynamics after acquiring the remaining shares from SoftBank in July. The Massachusetts-based company opened a robotics center at Hyundai’s electric vehicle production site outside of Savannah, Georgia, in September. It began training its robots for repetitive tasks at the Robotics Metaplant Application Center on a pilot basis in June.
Hyundai plans to deploy 25,000 Atlas units across its Kia factories and other global plants, with an initial rollout in 2028. Boston Dynamics said it wants to begin exploring use cases for other industry sectors next year.
“Boston Dynamics is uniquely positioned to advance Physical AI through its world-class expertise,” Prasad said in a statement. “I am honored to join the company at such a pivotal moment for the industry.”
Prasad is the company’s third CEO since the company was founded in 1992 as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Leg Lab. He is based in the Boston area.
