10 chief AI officers
UnitedHealth Group, Eli Lilly and Company, GSK, SAP, Manulife and Lam Research are among the ten employers where these chief AI officers hold the title today, and all ten are current. Their other titles range from academic AI research posts and IBM partner and Accenture managing director roles to engineering and data science leadership, so they can compare the different routes into the job and how each shapes what it covers.
Professionals to explore
David Fried
LinkedInExperience: Former Chief AI Officer & Corporate Vice President, Semiverse Solutions · Lam Research
David Fried became Chief AI Officer & Corporate Vice President, Semiverse Solutions at Lam Research in 2026, after Corporate Vice President, Semiverse Solutions (2022-2026) and Vice President Computational Products (2017-2022) there. David was Chief Technology Officer at Coventor, Inc., A Lam Research Company (2012-2017) and 22nm SOI Chief Technologist at IBM (2007-2012), a fit for holding the chief AI officer role alongside a product business.
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Duan Peng, Ph.D.
LinkedInExperience: Chief AI Officer · Ashley Furniture Industries
Duan Peng, Ph.D., has been Chief AI Officer at Ashley Furniture Industries since 2025, after Senior Vice President, Enterprise Head of AI and ML at Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits (2024-2025). Duan was Senior Vice President, Global Data & AI at Warner Bros. Discovery (2020-2024) and Vice President, Data Science and Machine Learning at The Walt Disney Company (2018-2020), and names enterprise AI strategy and agentic systems as focus areas.
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João Freitas
LinkedInExperience: Chief AI Officer · PagerDuty
João Freitas holds Chief AI Officer at PagerDuty (since 2026), leading its evolution into an AI-native company in operational AI, automation and agentic systems, and GM & VP of Engineering, AI & Automation since 2025. João was GM & Engineering Lead for AI (2025) and General Manager & Engineering Site Lead (2022-2025) at PagerDuty, and CTO at Defined.ai (2016-2022), suiting questions on an engineering-led AI mandate.
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Jodie Wallis
LinkedInExperience: Global Chief AI Officer · Manulife
Jodie Wallis is Global Chief AI Officer at Manulife since 2025, following Global Chief Analytics Officer there (2020-2025). At Accenture, Jodie was Managing Director, Applied Intelligence Canada (2019-2020) and Managing Director, Financial Services Canadian AI Lead (2017-2019), responsible for expanding Accenture's presence in the AI ecosystem and bringing AI expertise to Canadian clients, a fit for moving from an analytics mandate to an AI one.
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Jonathan von Rüden
LinkedInExperience: Chief AI Officer · SAP
Jonathan von Rüden was named Chief AI Officer at SAP in 2026. In the Head of AI Innovation role (2024-2026), Jonathan worked to discover, explore and build new AI-powered features and products, reporting to the global CTO with a team of 50; SAP roles also include Executive Business Assistant to Christian Klein (CEO) & strategic projects (2020-2023) and Head of data science at Enterprise Analytics (2018-2020).
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Kim Branson
LinkedInExperience: Chief AI Officer · GSK
Kim Branson holds two current GSK titles, Chief AI Officer (since 2026) and SVP Global Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (since 2019), leading a global team of engineers, data scientists and machine learning researchers pioneering a more data-driven approach to drug discovery. Kim was Head of A.I (ECDi) at Genentech (2018-2019) and Chief Data Scientist at Lumiata (2014-2018).
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Marko Topalovic
LinkedInExperience: Senior Vice President & Chief AI Officer · Clario
As Senior Vice President & Chief AI Officer at Clario since 2024, Marko Topalovic leads the company's global AI work, and Marko is also Founder & CEO (Acquired by Clario) of ArtiQ, from 2019. With KU Leuven research roles in AI in respiratory medicine (2016-2019) and respiratory diagnostics (2012-2016), Marko can speak to what changes when a founder's AI product becomes part of the acquiring company.
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Mukund Seetharaman
LinkedInExperience: Chief AI Officer · Adani Group
Mukund Seetharaman is Chief AI Officer at Adani Group (since 2025) and leads enterprise AI strategy there. Mukund was CEO AI Labs at Adani AI Labs (2024-2025), Chief Operating Officer at a Sequoia start up (2023-2024) and at Haptik (2022-2023), and Chief Growth Officer - Cloud Business, EMEA, APJI Markets at Tech Mahindra (2021-2022), a fit for running AI as a P&L across a group of businesses.
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Shobhit Varshney
LinkedInExperience: Chief AI Officer · UnitedHealth Group
Shobhit Varshney has been Chief AI Officer at UnitedHealth Group since 2026, with a stated focus on making enterprise AI work at scale where technical depth, business accountability and governance converge. Shobhit was Global Head of AI at Citi (2025-2026), Head of Data & AI, VP & Senior Partner at IBM (2022-2025) and Partner & Americas Head of AI at IBM (2018-2022), useful for comparing advising on AI with owning it.
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Thomas Fuchs
LinkedInExperience: Senior Vice President, Chief AI Officer · Eli Lilly and Company
Thomas Fuchs has been Senior Vice President, Chief AI Officer at Eli Lilly and Company since 2024 and a GeneDx board member since 2025. Thomas was Inaugural Chair of the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2021-2024) and has been an Adjunct Professor there since 2024, which suits questions on bringing academic AI research into a pharmaceutical company.
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Choose the right perspective
If the role you are scoping will sit close to science and research, Thomas Fuchs, Kim Branson and Marko Topalovic bring academic or drug discovery AI backgrounds. Shobhit Varshney (IBM partner titles) and Jodie Wallis (Accenture managing director, then Manulife's analytics chief) know the advisory and analytics side, while João Freitas, Jonathan von Rüden, David Fried, Duan Peng and Mukund Seetharaman fit questions on putting AI into products, platforms and operating businesses.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01What should a newly appointed chief AI officer own in the first year, and what should stay with the CIO or CTO?
- 02How do you choose between building an internal AI team and buying AI capabilities from vendors?
- 03What governance does a chief AI officer need in place before generative AI reaches customers?
About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot; roles marked former had ended by then. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.