Google’s answer to the AI arms race — promote the guy behind its data center tech
Google just made a major move in the AI infrastructure arms race, elevating Amin Vahdat to chief technologist for AI infrastructure, a newly created position reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai, according to a memo first reported by Semafor and later confirmed by TechCrunch. It’s a signal of just how critical this work has become as Google pours up to $93 billion into capital expenditures by the end of 2025 — a number that parent company Alphabet expects will be a whole lot bigger next year. Vahdat isn’t new to the game. The computer scientist, who holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and started as a research intern at Xerox PARC back in the early ’90s, has been quietly building Google’s AI backbone for the past 15 years. Before joining Google in 2010 as an engineering fellow…