IBM’s board of directors elected IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software Arvind Krishna as their next CEO. The current CEO, Virginia Rometty, will serve as Executive Chairman until the end of the year, at which point she will retire. James Whitehurst, IBM’s Senior Vice President and CEO of Red Hat, was elected President. Krishna and Whitehurst will take their new roles effective April 6.
Rometty, who became CEO in 2012, said Krishna “is a brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain. He is also a superb operational leader, able to win today while building the business of tomorrow.”
“I am thrilled and humbled to be elected as the next Chief Executive Officer of IBM, and appreciate the confidence that Ginni and the Board have placed in me,” said Krishna. "IBM has such talented people and technology that we can bring together to help our clients solve their toughest problems."
On Whitehurst, Rometty was similarly complimentary: “Jim is also a seasoned leader who has positioned Red Hat as the world’s leading provider of open source enterprise IT software solutions and services, and has been quickly expanding the reach and benefit of that technology to an even wider audience as part of IBM.” Krishna was a principal architect of IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat.
In a statement, Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, commemorated Rometty’s leadership of IBM: “Under Ginni, IBM became synonymous with quantum computing, artificial intelligence and solving problems—and she recognized the American worker is among our nation’s most valuable assets.”
“We congratulate Ginni Rometty on her tenure at IBM. And we look forward to continuing our successful partnership with IBM, as Arvind Krishna assumes the role of CEO and Jim Whitehurst begins as president,” said Shapiro.
