Meta's Infrastructure Chief Santosh Janardhan to Exit in 2027

Meta will spend up to $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026 — and a new executive will decide where much of it goes. Infrastructure head Santosh Janardhan will leave the company in 2027, handing one of tech's largest infrastructure budgets to David Brown, a former Amazon Web Services senior vice president who joined Meta in July 2026.

Bloomberg News first reported the departure. CNBC followed on November 11, 2026, saying it had obtained Janardhan's internal memo. Janardhan also serves as Meta's co-head of engineering and has worked at the company since 2009.

What changes at Meta Compute?

Brown will formally lead Meta's infrastructure organization and become chief technical officer of Meta Compute, the unit that develops the data centers and related infrastructure underpinning the company's AI ambitions. Meta Compute is spearheaded by Dina Powell McCormick, Meta's president and vice chairman, alongside technical leader Daniel Gross. Brown's CTO role sits within that leadership group, linking the infrastructure organization to the initiative's data center and AI responsibilities.

Janardhan's memo framed his exit as a planned leadership transition, not an abrupt departure. He will stay through the first quarter of 2027 to support Brown, according to the memo, which tied the timing to Meta "making its next set of choices about priorities."

The memo carried a direct endorsement of the successor. Janardhan wrote that Brown had spent his career building and operating dependable infrastructure for a wide range of demanding workloads, and described him as having "the instincts, depth and judgment this moment requires." He said the handover would let Brown shape Meta's next phase of infrastructure work.

How much money is at stake?

The financial backdrop explains why this particular job matters now. Meta's third-quarter 2026 results, released October 21, 2026, show quarterly capital expenditures of $34.91 billion including principal payments on finance leases — against $32.79 billion in cash flow from operating activities. In plain terms, Meta is building faster than its core business generates cash.

The company reported negative free cash flow of $2.12 billion for the quarter under a definition that subtracts both property-and-equipment purchases and finance-lease principal payments from operating cash flow. That negative figure means investment outlays exceeded what the quarter's operations produced.

For the full year, Meta narrowed its expected 2026 capital expenditure range to $135 billion to $145 billion, from an earlier $130 billion to $145 billion. The revision raised the bottom of the range by $5 billion while leaving the ceiling unchanged — effectively signaling that spending will land no lower than the midpoint of the old range.

What happens to the 2027 budget?

Meta said it is still developing its 2027 budget and capacity plans but expects to keep investing aggressively in its core business and emerging AI initiatives. Current and scheduled capacity, the company said, is intended to provide flexibility across model training, core-business growth, and the development and support of new products.

Brown will help set those allocations as the next budget takes shape, with Janardhan providing continuity during the transition period. The arrangement places a new infrastructure leader inside the management group that must decide how to divide capacity between core-business growth and AI development — at the precise moment capital outlays exceed operating cash generation.

The stakes are straightforward. Whoever controls the 2027 budget decides how Meta balances its proven advertising business against an AI buildout that is already consuming more cash than the company produces in a quarter. Janardhan's memo promises a smooth transition; the free-cash-flow numbers show how little margin for error the new CTO inherits.