Amazon's AI lab head David Luan quits: Who is he?
25 Feb 2026

David Luan, the Vice President of Agents and head of Amazon's San Francisco-based artificial intelligence lab, has announced his decision to leave the company.

The news comes just two years after he joined Amazon following the acquisition of Adept, a start-up he co-founded.

Luan shared his departure announcement on LinkedIn, saying he would be leaving at the end of this week "to cook up something new."

Luan had the opportunity to work with several top executives
Career highlights

During his time at Amazon, Luan had the opportunity to work with top executives such as Andy Jassy, Peter Desantis, Matt Garman, and Rohit Prasad. He led Amazon's agents R&D effort and the San Francisco AI lab.

Luan detailed his team's accomplishments at Amazon
Leadership transition

Luan detailed the accomplishments of his team at Amazon, including scaling up agent training recipes from Adept and conducting new RL research.

He announced that Peter Desantis, SVP of utility computing products at AWS, will take over his role.

"The team will be in great hands with Peter Desantis from here," he said.

Despite the opportunities for growth at Amazon, Luan felt it was important to focus on teaching AI systems new capabilities as AGI approaches.

He held key positions at several companies
Past experience

Before his stints at Amazon and Adept, Luan held several key positions.

These include being a Director at Google Research, VP of Engineering at OpenAI, Director of AI at Axion, and CEO of Dextro.

He has a certificate in Computer Science from Worcester State University and a BS/BA in Applied Math and Political Science from Yale University.

His work primarily focuses on the societal impacts of AI technology.