Adobe nabs Airbnb's CIO
Airbnb, Adobe, Intel and Meta all caught up in the shakeup.
After eight years at Airbnb, CIO Lucius DiPhillips has found a new home at Adobe amid a growing shuffle of some of the industry’s biggest tech leaders.
The eBay, PayPal and Bank of America veteran started at Adobe on January 20 after 5.5 years as Airbnb CIO and 2.5 as an engineering lead. He replaces Cindy Stoddard, who has left Adobe for a CIO role at Intel.
CFO Daniel Durn said Di Phillips “brings deep expertise in driving digital transformation and a people-first approach to leadership. His vision will be instrumental as we continue to scale and innovate in the era of AI.”
See also: Airbnb says no to ChatGPT integration, doesn't want to be just a "data layer"
During his Airbnb tenure, the CIO oversaw a number of major projects to overhaul its tech stack, including a 4.5 year long migration from code repository Gradle to OS build platform Bazel, and a shift from AWS EC2 instances to Kubernetes.
Adobe's AI shift
Now, DiPhillips will lead Adobe global Technology Services team as it brings AI to both its consumer products and its own hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructure.
During an September earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said AI represented a “tectonic technology shift” for the company as he promised to integrate it across the Adobe product suite.
Providing a glimpse into its expectations for the new CIO, Adobe's announcement touted DiPhillips’s experience with “multi-million dollar infrastructure savings” and workforce efficiency.
CIO musical chairs
DiPhillips replaces Cindy Stoddard in the role at Adobe after her nine year stint as CIO, which ended after her decision to move to Intel, where she succeeded Motti Finkelstein amid CEO Lip Bu Tan’s shakeup at the company.
DiPhillips’ departure from Airbnb also comes during an executive transformation at the vacation rental platform, with CTO Ari Balogh also stepping down in December.
Balogh was replaced by Meta’s Head of GenAI Ahmad Al-Dahle, who joined as CTO last week after almost six years leading the development of its open-source Llama models. Airbnb is yet to announce a new CIO.