Meta's Infrastructure Chief Janardhan to Step Down in Early 2027

What happened

Bloomberg first reported Janardhan's departure on Nov 11, citing an internal memo, and Meta then confirmed it to TechCrunch and Reuters. Janardhan joined Meta in 2009 and long headed infrastructure while co-heading engineering, overseeing the large-scale compute buildout that serves billions of users and AI training. A Meta spokesperson said Janardhan will stay on to support the transition and then move into an advisory role on Meta Compute.

His successor, Dave Brown, joined Meta in July as vice president of infrastructure after nearly two decades at Amazon Web Services, where he ran computing and machine learning products. The handover comes as Meta sharply raises AI infrastructure spending: its third-quarter report lifted the 2026 capital expenditure outlook to $135 billion to $145 billion, including principal payments on finance leases.

Janardhan gave no reason for his departure in the memo, and Meta has said nothing further. Bloomberg reports that Meta policy chief Joel Kaplan is also due to leave in 2027. Before Janardhan's departure, Meta had put three Muse models on Google Cloud and was pursuing a compute lease deal with Anthropic.

Key facts

1. Departing: Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, joined in 2009 and will step down in early 2027
2. Successor: Dave Brown, who joined Meta in July as vice president of infrastructure after nearly two decades at AWS
3. Transition: Janardhan stays through the first quarter of 2027, then moves into an advisory role on Meta Compute
4. Context: Meta's 2026 capital expenditure outlook is $135 billion to $145 billion, including principal payments on finance leases
5. Reason: Janardhan gave no reason in the memo; Meta has said nothing further
6. Related change: Policy chief Joel Kaplan is also due to leave in 2027