Virginia Rometty steps down, IBM elevates Arvind Krishna as CEO

Arvind Krishna, the head of IBM’s cloud and cognitive software unit and who was a principal architect of the company’s purchase of Red Hat, has been promoted to the position of chief executive officer, replacing Virginia Rometty.

Krishna, 57, whom Rometty described as the “right CEO for the next era at IBM”, will thus join the elite list of Indian-origin CEOs heading major US technology firms such as Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and MasterCard.

Krishna will take charge on April 6, while Rometty, who has been at the helm since 2012, will continue as executive chairman until the end of the year and then retire after almost 40 years with the company.