Arvind Krishna | |
---|---|
Born | 1962 (age 61–62) West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh, India[1] |
Citizenship | American[2] |
Education | Stanes Anglo Indian School St Joseph's Academy |
Alma mater | IIT Kanpur (B.Tech) University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign (PhD) |
Title | Chairman & CEO, IBM |
Predecessor | Ginni Rometty |
Arvind Krishna (born 1962) is an Indian-American business executive, and the chairman and CEO of IBM. He has been CEO of IBM since April 2020 and chairman since January 2021.[3][4] Krishna began his career at IBM in 1990, at its Thomas J. Watson Research Center,[5] and was promoted to senior vice president in 2015, managing IBM Cloud & Cognitive Software and IBM Research divisions. He was a principal architect of the acquisition of Red Hat, the largest acquisition in the company’s history.[6][7]
Krishna was born into a Telugu-speaking family in West Godavari District in the Coastal Andhra region of Andhra Pradesh, India.[1][8] His father, Major General Vinod Krishna, was an army officer who served in the Indian Army and his mother, Aarathi Krishna, worked for the welfare of Army widows.[9][10]
Krishna received his education at Stanes Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School, Coonoor, Tamil Nadu and at St Joseph's Academy, Dehradun[11] before receiving a BTech degree in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1985.[8] He subsequently moved to the United States to earn a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1991.[12][13][14][15] He is the recipient of distinguished alumni awards from both IIT Kanpur and the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.
Krishna joined IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1990,[5] and continued in Watson Research for 18 years until 2009. Thereafter, he held a General Manager role in Information management software and systems and technology group of IBM. In 2015, he was promoted to senior vice president of IBM Research.[16] He later became senior vice president of IBM's cloud and cognitive software division.[8]
Krishna also led the building and expansion of new markets for IBM in artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing, and blockchain technology.[17][18] He was a driving force behind IBM's $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, which closed in July 2019.[19][7]
He was appointed IBM's CEO in January 2020, effective April 6, 2020,[20] succeeding Ginni Rometty who was CEO since 2012.[21] He joined Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayen, and Sundar Pichai as an Indian-American CEO of a major United States technology company.[22][23] In 2021, he was named by CRN as the year's "Most Influential Executive".[24]
He has co-authored 15 patents, has been the editor of IEEE and ACM journals, and has published extensively in technical journals.[18]