GM software leader Baris Cetinok leaving amid automaker restructuring

DETROIT – A third high-profile technology executive is leaving General Motors amid a restructuring of the automaker’s software and product businesses, CNBC has learned.

Baris Cetinok, GM senior vice president of software and services product management, will depart the company effective Dec. 12, the automaker confirmed Tuesday after an internal announcement to employees.

Cetinok is the third tech-turned-auto executive to leave GM in roughly a month as the company combines its vehicle software engineering and global product units under one organization, led by new Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson.

“Baris has built a strong software product management team at GM. We’re grateful for his contributions and wish him continued success. With hardware and software engineering unified under Global Product, we’re integrating product management with engineering to accelerate the delivery of exceptional in-vehicle experiences,” GM said in an emailed statement to CNBC.

Cetinok, who joined GM in September 2023 after stints with companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, could not immediately be reached for comment. The announcement of his departure comes a month after he described his position as “a product person’s dream” in an interview with CNBC.

GM’s senior vice president of software and services engineering, Dave Richardson, and its head of GM artificial intelligence, Barak Turovsky, have also left the company since October. Richardson was with GM for more than two years, while Turovsky was hired in March.

Anderson left the self-driving company he cofounded, Aurora Innovation, to join GM. He told CNBC last month that in order for the automaker to succeed, software and product must be thought of as one and the same.

“That’s the point of the role, I think, is it brings together all of these pieces into a unified approach to how we do product going forward,” Anderson said during an Oct. 22 interview at a GM technology event in New York.

Anderson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who later led Tesla’s AutoPilot program, said his goal is to accelerate the pace of GM’s innovations.

When Anderson’s appointment with GM was announced in May, Cetinok said in a LinkedIn post he was “delighted to welcome” the executive to the company. GM CEO Mary Barra and GM President Mark Reuss also hailed Anderson as being equipped to “evolve” and “reinvent” the automaker’s operations.

The global automotive industry has battled for years to better integrate technology into vehicles – from their production to consumer-facing software and remote, or “over-the-air,” updates like Tesla pioneered.

GM has taken an aggressive approach to combat such challenges by hiring leaders from Tesla and technology companies such as Apple and Google. However, many times, such executives have had short tenures with the company.