A view of Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, United States on April 16, 2024.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu | Getty Images
Eli Lilly CFO Anat Ashkenazi will become Alphabet’s new chief financial officer effective July 31, Google’s parent company announced Tuesday, almost a year after Alphabet first announced current CFO Ruth Porat would move to a new role as president and chief investment officer.
Ashkenazi has had a 23-year career at Eli Lilly, which in a separate release confirmed her departure.
“We’re very pleased to have found such a strong CFO, with a track record of strategic focus on long-term investment to fuel innovation and growth,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a release.
Ashkenazi joined Eli Lilly in 2001 and had been CFO since 2021. She will continue to serve on the pharmaceutical company’s executive committee until her departure. She previously served as a CFO for several of the company’s global business areas, helping to manage the revenue windfall from Eli Lilly’s weight loss and diabetes drugs.
Porat had nearly three-decade career as as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, culminating as its CFO, before joining Google in 2015. She helped Google grow into one of the most valuable companies in the world, even as it has contended with threats ranging from the AI race to antitrust investigations.
The leadership shuffle has long been in the works. Google first announced in 2023 that Porat would step down and has been mounting a search process since then.
Google’s finance unit has been grappling with other changes in recent months as well. Porat announced earlier this year that Google was restructuring its finance unit as the company pushed to favor investments in AI, CNBC previously reported, with layoffs and relocations that would impact teams worldwide.
Other top executives at the firm include chief business officer Philipp Schindler, search chief Prabhakar Raghavan and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
Google’s “old guard” has experienced shifts beyond just Porat, CNBC has previously detailed. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, former chief business officer Robert Kyncl and widely respected AI authority Geoffrey Hinton are among those who have departed or announced their departure since 2023.
Google shares were slightly up in pre-market trading Tuesday.
— CNBC’s Jenn Elias and Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report.
