Meta Infrastructure Chief Santosh Janardhan to Exit in 2027 Handover

Meta will spend $135 billion to $145 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, and the executive running the infrastructure behind that build-out, Santosh Janardhan, is leaving the company in 2027.

Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure and co-head of engineering, announced the move in an internal memo on Wednesday, Nov. 11, obtained by CNBC. Bloomberg News first reported the transition. He joined Meta in 2009 and will stay through the first quarter of 2027 to support the handover.

"It's time to pass the baton," Janardhan wrote. "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."

Who is taking over?

Dave Brown, the former Amazon Web Services senior vice president for compute and machine learning services, will formally lead Meta's infrastructure and become chief technical officer of Meta Compute.

Meta Compute is the build-out initiative led by Meta president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick and technical leader Daniel Gross.

Brown left AWS at the end of July and joined Meta the same month. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that he would report to Janardhan and work on the data center build-out. Janardhan praised his successor in the memo.

"Dave has spent his career building and operating dependable infrastructure for a wide range of demanding workloads," Janardhan wrote.

The appointment puts a proven hyperscaler operator in charge of one of the largest data center construction programs in the industry, just as investors press Meta on the cost of it.

Why the change matters now

The leadership transition lands amid scrutiny of Meta's spending. The company spent $34.91 billion in capital expenditures in the third quarter and reported negative free cash flow of $2.12 billion.

On Oct. 21, Meta narrowed its 2026 capital expenditure outlook — including finance lease principal payments — to $135 billion to $145 billion, from a prior range of $130 billion to $145 billion.

S&P Global Ratings revised its outlook on Meta's AA- rating to negative in late October, citing that cash flow among other factors, CNBC reported.

Data center headwinds and progress

The capex pressure is colliding with local resistance. Meta has said local opposition after the midterms will make new US data centers harder to build, according to MLQ.ai coverage.

Construction continues regardless. A 600 MWh battery supporting Meta's Eagle Mountain, Utah, data center began operating this week, MLQ.ai reported.

The Eagle Mountain battery gives the site storage capacity roughly comparable to a large grid-scale plant, underscoring the scale of power infrastructure the build-out requires.

What comes next

Brown must now deliver Meta Compute on a schedule set before he arrived, with a budget that analysts and rating agencies already view as strained, and with Janardhan gone after Q1 2027.

The handover tests whether an AWS-trained operator can compress construction timelines and costs at Meta the way investors now demand.

For now, the company has committed its capital, named its operator, and set a departure date. The first real measure of Brown's tenure will be whether 2026 capex lands inside the narrowed range while free cash flow returns to positive territory.