Introduction
Arvind Krishna (born 1962) is an Indian American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of IBM. Krishna began his career at IBM as an engineer, was promoted to senior vice president in 2015, and was promoted to CEO in 2020. He led IBM's 2018 acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion, which is the largest software company acquisition in history. On his first day as CEO, Krishna wrote to IBM staff, "I believe we can make IBM the most trusted technology partner of the 21st century...Character is of the utmost importance."
Early life and education
Krishna was born in West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh, India. His father, Major General Vijay Krishna,was an army officer who worked for the Indian Army of the Government of India and his mother, Aarti Krishna, worked for the welfare of Army widows.
He completed schooling in St Joseph's Academy, Dehradun andthe Stanes School, Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, before receiving a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1985. He subsequently traveled to the United States to earn a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1990.
Career
Krishna joined IBM in 1990, rising to become senior vice president for IBM's cloud and cognitive software. He led IBM's 2018 acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion.
He was appointed to become IBM CEO on January 31, 2020, succeeding Ginni Rometty who had served as CEO since 2012. He joined Satya Nadella (Telugu),Shantanu Narayen (Telugu), and Sundar Pichai (Tamil) as an South Indian CEO of a major United States technology company .