Microsoft-owned open-source developer platform GitHub recently announced that the company has elevated current Chief Product Officer Thomas Dohmke as CEO of the platform. The change comes at a time when development is moving to the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI).
Dohmke will be taking over the reins from current CEO Nat Friedman, who has been at the helm for the past three years. Friedman was appointed to lead GitHub after the code hosting provider joined Microsoft in 2018 through a $7.5 billion acquisition.
Dohmke joined GitHub in 2018 after leading the acquisition by Microsoft with Friedman. During his time as GitHub’s Chief Product Officer, Dohmke launched new capabilities for products such as Codespaces, Issues, and Copilot that have cured more headaches for developers. Dohmke also led the work to make private repositories free.
“I cannot wait to begin this journey as GitHub’s new CEO and continue to make GitHub better for all developers. We will remain customer-obsessed, working to support teams of all sizes and projects of all scopes—from students that are just learning to code, small and really big open source projects that span the globe to the world’s largest enterprises. And of course, we will continue to operate independently as a community, platform, and business. This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud,” said Dohmke.
Current CEO Nat Friedman said, “I am confident in the GitHub team and Thomas to meet every new challenge and opportunity ahead. Thank you for the energy and creativity you bring to work every day that makes GitHub GitHub. I can’t wait to see what we all build in the years to come.”
Under Friedman’s leadership, GitHub Actions became the #1 CI service; Discussions is used by over half of the top 100 open source communities on the platform, and Sponsors is enabling developers to earn millions of dollars for their contributions.
