Amazon hired former Microsoft Copilot CTO Pedram Rezaei to help the e-commerce and cloud giant build out its agentic AI business.
Rezaei joined AWS as a distinguished engineer in its Agentic AI and Emerging Technologies group, according to an email announcement on Monday.
He spent two decades at Microsoft, most recently training foundation models on the company’s Superintelligence team. Rezaei served as Copilot’s CTO until June and previously held senior technical roles in key product areas including search engine Bing and business software suite Dynamics 365.
At Amazon, Rezaei will initially work on Quick and Kiro, two products Amazon sees as central to its AI agent strategy, according to the email by Swami Sivasubramanian, the company’s VP of agentic AI. An Amazon spokesperson shared the memo with Business Insider.
Amazon
Quick is AWS’s AI assistant and productivity app, while Kiro is an AI-powered coding tool. Quick’s monthly AI users grew fourfold from the first to second quarter, while Kiro’s user base doubled over the same period, Sivasubramanian noted in the email.
“Pedram joins at an exciting time for our organization as we continue to build out our technical leadership team to help take on the ambitious work we have planned,” he wrote in the memo.
The hire gives Amazon an experienced builder from one of its biggest rivals at a moment when the company is trying to turn its AI investments into widely used products. Microsoft has made Copilot a centerpiece of its AI strategy. Amazon, meanwhile, has been building its own portfolio of AI tools, from its Bedrock model platform to coding assistants and agentic software.
Rezaei’s arrival also suggests Amazon is making a stronger push in the AI agent space. The market is growing quickly, with new agent offerings such as OpenAI’s Dots, Meta’s Muse and Instinct gaining traction.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been shaking up leadership to accelerate its AI strategy. Two more high-profile executives are on the way out.
Peter Lee, a Microsoft veteran influential in the company’s AI research, on Wednesday announced plans to leave.
The next day, Microsoft Office boss Ryan Roslansky said he’ll be gone at the end of the year. Roslansky’s departure was especially surprising as he was seen as a successor to longtime veteran Rajesh Jha, who retired in July. Roslansky was also a key part of Nadella’s new inner circle and was one of three executives who made up Microsoft’s new Copilot leadership team.
Here’s the full email from Amazon’s Sivasubramanian:
Team, I’m happy to share that Pedram Rezaei is joining Agentic AI and Emerging Technologies as a Distinguished Engineer, effective today. Pedram joins us after more than 20 years at Microsoft, most recently working on training foundation models and, before that, in senior architecture and CTO roles across Copilot, Power BI, and other products. He is a hands-on engineer who is still in the code every day, and he plans to keep it that way here. He lives in Seattle with his wife and their two young sons. Please join me in welcoming him. As many of you know, we have a major opportunity with Quick and Kiro to transform how work gets done. The number of users for Kiro doubled from Q1 to Q2, while monthly AI users for Quick grew 4x. Initially, Pedram will help work to bolster these product areas. His plan for the first few months is straightforward: meet people, learn how things work here, and ship something real. Pedram joins at an exciting time for our organization as we continue to build out our technical leadership team to help take on the ambitious work we have planned. In addition, I want to take this opportunity to share some news with the wider team. As many of you know, we see our investments in Neurosymbolic AI and automated reasoning as one of our biggest bets for the future, and to help execute that vision, we’ve brought back Marvin Theimer and Reto Kramer. They’ve already been back for a little while now, and it’s great to have them in the fold again. Thanks for the warm welcome I know you’ll extend to all three. Swami
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