International Business Machines Corp. named Indian-origin Arvind Krishna as chief executive officer, replacing longtime CEO Virginia Rometty. The 57-year-old will take over the charge on April 6.
“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,” Krishna said in a press statement released by IBM.
Krishna, is currently the head of IBM’s cloud and cognitive software unit and was a principal architect of the company’s purchase of Red Hat, which was completed last year. Rometty, 62, will continue as executive chairman and serve through the end of the year, when she will retire after almost 40 years with the company, IBM said in a statement January 30.
Here are five little known facts about Arvind Krishna:
- Arvind Krishna is an IIT-Kanpur graduate. He has done PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign. He is the co-author of 15 patents, has been the editor of IEEE and ACM journals, and has published extensively in technical conferences and journals.
- IBM has credited Krishna as the “principal architect” of the company’s Red Hat acquisition. The $34 billion acquisition was completed last July. It is said to be IBM’s largest acquisition yet in its long history.
- Krishna joined IBM at the end of 1990, which was the same year he earned his PhD, according to his LinkedIn profile.
- He has served as IBM’s senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software for the past year, having assumed the role in January 2019. His oversight includes the IBM Cloud platform, as well as the IBM Security division and Cognitive Applications business.
- Krishna’s appointment as head of IBM adds to the growing list of Indian-origin executives at the helm of some of the biggest multinational companies. Krishna joins the club that includes Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, PepsiCo’s former CEO Indra Nooyi and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.