Google’s answer to the AI arms race — promote the guy behind its data center tech

Google has appointed Amin Vahdat as its chief technologist for AI infrastructure, a newly created role reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. This move underscores the critical importance of AI infrastructure as Google plans to significantly increase its capital expenditures by the end of 2025. Vahdat, a computer scientist with a PhD from UC Berkeley, has been instrumental in building Google’s AI backbone over the past 15 years, focusing on large-scale computer efficiency. Before joining Google in 2010, he held academic positions at Duke University and UC San Diego. Vahdat’s contributions include leading the development of Google’s seventh-generation TPU (Ironwood), which delivers 42.5 exaflops of compute power—far surpassing the world’s top supercomputer at the time. He has also overseen the creation of the Jupiter network, a high-speed internal network with bandwidth capable of supporting simultaneous video calls for the entire global population, and has played a key role in Google’s