Arvind Krishna

Arvind Krishna is the Chairman and CEO of IBM, one of the oldest and most storied technology companies in the world, founded in 1911. Born in 1962 in Andhra Pradesh, India, Krishna earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and joined IBM in 1990. He spent three decades in research and development, leading the teams that built IBM's cloud infrastructure and hybrid cloud strategy, before being named CEO in April 2020. Krishna was the architect of IBM's $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in 2019 — the largest software acquisition in history at the time — while serving as Senior Vice President of Cloud and Cognitive Software. As CEO, he has built IBM's entire strategy around the thesis that enterprises will operate in hybrid multi-cloud environments, and that Red Hat's OpenShift platform is the critical middleware layer connecting them. His most dramatic structural move was spinning off IBM's managed infrastructure services division as Kyndryl in November 2021, shedding $19 billion in low-growth revenue to create a leaner, faster-growing IBM focused on software and consulting. This was the largest corporate spin-off in technology history and fundamentally reset IBM's financial profile, enabling higher growth rates and margins. Krishna has positioned IBM as an enterprise AI company through the watsonx platform — a suite of AI foundation models, data management tools, and governance capabilities aimed at large enterprises deploying AI at scale. Unlike consumer-focused AI companies, IBM targets regulated industries — banking, healthcare, government — where data privacy, auditability, and deployment control are critical requirements. His strategy of "enterprise AI with guardrails" has resonated with IBM's traditional enterprise customer base, driving software and consulting revenue growth.