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Red Hat names Matt Hicks as new CEO

Paul Cormier moves into chairman's role.

Red Hat has named Matt Hicks as its president and chief executive officer succeeding Paul Cormier who is shifting into the chairman’s post. 

Hicks previously served as Red Hat’s executive vice president of products and technologies, joining the company in 2006 as a developer on the IT team. 

He quickly rose via leadership positions across the organisation and was a foundational member of the engineering team that developed Red Hat OpenShift. 

“When I first joined Red Hat, I was passionate about open source and our mission, and I wanted to be a part of that. I am humbled and energised to be stepping into this role at this moment,” Hicks said. “There has never been a more exciting time to be in our industry and the opportunity in front of Red Hat is vast. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and prove that open source technology truly can unlock the world’s potential.”

Cormier took on the president and CEO mantel in 2020 and has been with open source specialist for 21 years.

“Matt is the exemplification of a true Red Hatter and is absolutely the right person to step into this role,” Cormier said. “His experience across different parts of our business has given him depth and breadth of knowledge about how we can best work together to scale and remain the open hybrid cloud leader. 

“He understands our product strategy and the direction the industry is moving in a way that’s second to none.”

Cormier played an instrumental role in the expansion of Red Hat’s portfolio to a full, modern IT stack based on open source innovation. His efforts to transform Red Hat Linux from a freely downloadable operating system to a subscription model with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), was a pivotal moment. 

As chairman, Cormier will serve as Red Hat’s strategic touchstone and key advisor. His focus will continue to be on scaling the company and accelerating customer adoption of open source technology. 

Having led more than 26 acquisitions at Red Hat, Cormier will also work closely with Red Hat leadership on future merger and acquisition strategy. He will continue to work alongside IBM chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna in this capacity with both Cormier and Hicks reporting to Krishna.

“As chairman, I’m excited to get to work with our customers, partners, and Matt in new ways,” Cormier said. “My focus moving forward will be on helping customers drive innovation forward with a hybrid cloud platform built on open source technology. Open source technology has won the innovation debates and whatever the future looks like, it’s going to be built on open source technology and Red Hat will be there.”