Amazon AWS: AWS' data center chief Chris Vonderhaar makes abrupt departure

Chris Vonderhaar, head of data center design, planning, construction, and operation, has made an abrupt departure from AWS. This announcement comes as AWS continues to invest in its data center footprint, pegged to invest $35 billion alone on new data centers in Virginia by 2040.

AWS has also announced plans to invest $6 billion in data centers in Malaysia, as well as plans to invest $12.7 billion in new data centers in India. Following Amazon being controversially awarded $1 billion in tax breaks, it’s also planning to build five data centers in Oregon. 

Vonderhaar had been with AWS for nearly 13 years in top cloud infrastructure roles, heading up the branch responsible for powering the $85 billion cloud company’s infrastructure and cloud services.

AWS has not commented on Vonderhaar’s departure or whether it has found a replacement.