Boston Dynamics named Rohit Prasad as its chief executive officer on October 6, 2026, with the appointment effective the next day, October 7. Prasad comes from Amazon, where he led the Alexa assistant and the Amazon Nova family of foundation models, and the company’s announcement presents the hire as a way to speed up what it calls its Physical AI strategy: combining its robots with AI models and selling the result at scale.
Boston Dynamics is best known for its hardware: the Spot quadruped, the Stretch box-moving robot and the Atlas humanoid. Its new chief executive’s record is in AI models and the services built on them, which is the clearest signal in the announcement about where the company wants to go next.
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Who Rohit Prasad is
According to Boston Dynamics, Prasad was Senior Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa and Artificial General Intelligence at Amazon. Over 12 years at the company he helped build Alexa from its earliest days into a consumer AI service the release says is used in hundreds of millions of households, and more recently led development of the Amazon Nova foundation models sold to enterprises.
Before Amazon he spent nearly 14 years at Raytheon BBN Technologies, leading machine-learning research and its application for US government and commercial customers. Boston Dynamics says he has been based in the Boston area for more than 25 years. Subject to the relevant approval process, he is also expected to join the company’s board of directors.
What the company says the appointment is for
The release ties the appointment directly to commercialisation. Boston Dynamics says Prasad will work on “productizing intelligent robotic systems” for industrial and commercial sites, and that his experience turning AI research into products at global scale is the reason for the choice.
Jaehoon Chang, Vice Chair of Hyundai Motor Group and Chair of the Boston Dynamics board, named three ingredients in the company’s statement: Boston Dynamics’ robotics, Prasad’s record of turning AI into products, and Hyundai Motor Group’s manufacturing, logistics and mobility capabilities.
Where Atlas stands
In the same release, Boston Dynamics describes Atlas as its “electric humanoid platform currently in development”, alongside Spot, which it sells for industrial inspection, and Stretch, which moves boxes for logistics and retail customers. Two recent steps show what that development looks like in practice:
- On September 21, 2026 the company opened a centre at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia to train Atlas on manufacturing tasks, covered in our report on the Robotics Metaplant Application Center.
- On October 1, 2026 it showed a new 13-degree-of-freedom Atlas hand with tactile sensing.
The new chief executive takes over a humanoid programme that is now training inside a Hyundai Motor Group plant, with a Hyundai vice chair chairing the board. For how humanoids differ from the fixed industrial arms already in such plants, see our explainer on humanoid vs industrial robots. More company announcements are collected in Humanoid robots news.
