Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, will leave the company in 2027. He is handing its AI data center build-out to Dave Brown, a former Amazon Web Services senior vice president who joined Meta in July.
Janardhan announced the move in an internal memo on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Bloomberg first reported the transition, and CNBC obtained the memo.
In it, Janardhan wrote that “it’s time to pass the baton” to Brown. He will help with the handover through the first quarter of 2027.
The change matters because of what Brown inherits. Meta expects capital spending of $135 billion to $145 billion this year as it builds out AI data centers. That is roughly double what it spent in 2025.
What the memo and Meta said
Janardhan’s memo gave no personal reason for leaving, and neither did Meta. He framed it as timing. “As we make the next set of choices about our priorities, this is the right time for Dave to take the lead in shaping that work,” he wrote, according to CNBC.
He also praised his successor. “Dave has spent his career building and operating dependable infrastructure for a wide range of demanding workloads,” Janardhan wrote. “He has the instincts, depth and judgment this moment requires.”
Meta confirmed the departure to TechCrunch. “Santosh will stay on for transition and he is moving into an advisory role on Meta Compute,” a Meta representative said. Some reports describe that next role as chief technology officer of Meta Compute. Meta’s own statement does not use that title, so we don’t either.
Who Santosh Janardhan is
Janardhan has been at Meta since 2009, according to his official Meta biography. Before that he led database and storage teams at YouTube, Google and PayPal. At Meta he founded the production engineering team. He now oversees the people who build and run its hardware, networks, software and data centers worldwide.
His job grew sharply this year. In January, Mark Zuckerberg created Meta Compute, a top-level effort to build the company’s AI capacity, and put Janardhan in charge of it. “Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time.
The same announcement gave two other executives a share of it. Daniel Gross, the former Safe Superintelligence CEO, took on long-term capacity planning and supplier deals. Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president and vice chairman, works on partnerships with governments.
Dave Brown’s AWS background
Brown spent 19 years at Amazon, working on compute, cloud and AI, TechCrunch reported. He joined Meta in July as vice president of infrastructure. He will now formally lead that work within Meta Compute, CNBC reported, alongside Powell McCormick and Gross.
The handover puts someone who ran cloud infrastructure as a business in charge of Meta’s biggest cost. Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, spent part of the October earnings call on making compute cheaper per unit, 24/7 Wall St. noted. Meta’s own numbers show why that matters.
Meta’s capex, by its own filings
Here is how Meta’s capital spending guidance has moved, from its quarterly earnings releases. The figures include principal payments on finance leases.
| Date | What Meta reported | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Jan. 28, 2026 | Full-year 2025 capex, actual | $72.22 billion |
| Jan. 28, 2026 | First 2026 outlook | $115-135 billion |
| Oct. 21, 2026 | Revised 2026 outlook | $135-145 billion |
| Oct. 21, 2026 | Third-quarter 2026 capex, actual | $34.91 billion |
Sources: Meta’s fourth-quarter 2025 release and third-quarter 2026 release.
By our math, the middle of the current range, $140 billion, is 1.94 times what Meta spent in 2025. The low end of the 2026 forecast is now where the top end stood in January.
The spending has outrun the cash. In the third quarter, Meta’s free cash flow was negative $2.12 billion, its release shows. In late October, S&P Global Ratings moved Meta’s credit outlook from stable to negative, CNBC reported. Meta has also turned to share sales to fund the build-out, as we covered in our look at why Meta is selling up to $95 billion of stock.
Meta has not given a 2027 capex figure. Its October release said only that it expects to “continue investing aggressively” in its core business and AI.
The handover runs into a harder 2027
Brown also takes over as data centers get harder to build locally. On Nov. 3, voters went against data centers in 37 of 38 local ballot measures counted by our tally, over power, water and tax breaks.
The next marker is Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings report. This year’s came on Jan. 28 and carried the first 2026 spending outlook, so the 2027 number is likely to land in the same window, on Brown’s watch. Janardhan’s handover runs through the end of March.
