Rohit Prasad, who led Amazon’s artificial general intelligence division and helped build and scale Alexa, has been tapped as the new CEO of Boston Dynamics.

The appointment, announced earlier this week, puts Prasad at the forefront of the increasingly competitive humanoid robotics field. Hyundai Motor Group, which owns Boston Dynamics, announced earlier this year that it plans to build a factory capable of producing 30,000 robots per year by 2028.

“Boston Dynamics is uniquely positioned to advance physical AI through its world-class robotics expertise,” Prasad said in a statement. “I am honored to join the company at such a pivotal moment for the industry.”

Tesla, of course, also wants to become a leader in humanoid robotics, meaning Prasad’s progress will inevitably be measured against the company’s Optimus program and the sometimes outlandish claims CEO Elon Musk makes about its ambitions.

It’s a challenging job already, and one that could become considerably more competitive in the next few years.

Prasad built his reputation at Amazon, but his career began at Raytheon’s BBN Technologies, where he led machine-learning research and worked on real-world applications for the technology. His work included speech-to-speech translation, psychological health analytics, document image translation, speech recognition, and text classification.

His interest in machine learning was partly born from a childhood watching Star Trek, which sparked a fascination with computers people could talk to.

There, Prasad developed a reputation for taking advances in AI and turning them into products people could actually use. The most notable example was Alexa.

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