CRN breaks down the 25 Most Influential Executives of 2026 who are driving sales, transforming their business and paving the way for the future.
In a year defined by rapid technological change and global economic headwinds, the technology industry’s most influential executives are setting the agenda for the future of business. These 25 leaders are shaping the direction of AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing and digital transformation while guiding their organizations through an increasingly complex market.
Whether confronting supply chain disruptions, responding to shifting trade policies or capitalizing on AI’s explosive growth, the executives on CRN’s Top 25 Most Influential Executives of 2026 are among the key decision-makers driving the IT industry’s next chapter.
This year’s Most Influential executive is AWS CEO Matt Garman, whose partner dedication, AI vision and industry-leading cloud AI innovation strategy earned him the top spot.
Other leaders who are shaping the world of IT include Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, CrowdStrike’s George Kurtz and Cisco’s Chuck Robbins, to name a few.
CRN breaks down the 25 Most Influential Executives of 2026 who are driving sales, transforming their business and paving the way for the future, part of CRN’s Top 100 Executives of 2026.
25. Charles Giancarlo
Chairman, CEO
Everpure
Everpure, which until this year was known as Pure Storage, under Giancarlo has shifted from a focus on pure performance in storage infrastructure to what it takes to store, manage and get value from data in an AI world. He continues to ensure that Everpure maintains peak hardware performance while making its technology an essential part of the cloud.
24. Marc Benioff
Co-Founder, Chair, CEO
Salesforce
Benioff has reinvented the company he founded almost 30 years ago into one of the most influential AI and data platform powerhouses today. The Agentforce agent-building platform is opening new markets, services opportunities and revenue streams for partners focused on enterprise AI.
23. Paul Bay
CEO
Ingram Micro
Bay has steered Ingram Micro through a transformative period, accelerating investments in AI, cloud and digital capabilities while strengthening the distributor’s global partner ecosystem. Under his leadership, Ingram Micro expanded the reach of its Xvantage platform, helping MSPs simplify operations, unlock new revenue opportunities and drive profitable growth.
22. Ed Meyercord
President, CEO
Extreme Networks
It’s easy to find multi-vendor management, agentic AI, operational simplicity and enterprise focus in networking vendors. However, under Meyercord, Extreme Networks demonstrates a unique ability to tie all those capabilities into a single operational platform that reduces the number of tools needed to do so.
21. Bill McDermott
Chairman, CEO
ServiceNow
In the seven years since McDermott took the reins at ServiceNow, the company has enjoyed the fastest organic growth in the history of enterprise software. But he’s not finished yet. Under McDermott, ServiceNow is fully committed to bringing AI to every nook and cranny of the enterprise with a platform known for playing well with others.
20. Joe Levy
CEO
Sophos
Under Levy’s leadership, Sophos has doubled down on security operations and MDR (managed detection and response), including through integrating capabilities from the acquisition of Secureworks to boost offerings such as ITDR (identity threat detection and response). Sophos also recently acquired Arco Cyber to expand its capabilities for cyber governance, risk and compliance.
19. George Kurian
CEO
NetApp
NetApp under Kurian has shown the world how to lead in data storage amid the age of cloud and AI. NetApp continues to make its technology an integral part of all the top cloud providers, turning its data management into cloud-native capabilities while helping businesses of all sizes prepare their data for AI.
18. Patrick Zammit
CEO
TD Synnex
Zammit took the reins at TD Synnex just two years ago but has since steered the world’s largest IT distributor from win to win, showing his team how to navigate toward success in the cloud and AI businesses. Zammit has committed his company to helping channel partners become winners in the distributor’s top priorities of software, public cloud, networking and AI.
17. Sanjay Poonen
President, CEO
Cohesity
Poonen has been instrumental in making Cohesity one of the largest providers of data protection, resiliency and management technologies. In a world where a business’ value is ever more tied to the value of its data, Poonen has shown what it takes to ensure that data is accessible and useful.
16. Lip-Bu Tan
CEO
Intel
Just what the doctor ordered. In only 16 months at the helm, Tan has revitalized and re-energized the chip behemoth and in the process has made the company relevant in the AI era. Partners say they are fired up about the AI opportunities that are opening up as a result of Tan’s leadership.
15. Jay Chaudhry
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Zscaler
Led by Chaudhry, Zscaler has taken a partner-driven approach to its push around AI security and enablement, including an increasing reliance on the channel for driving new growth and delivering services. Zscaler recently unveiled its newest AI security offerings while expanding the capabilities of its Zero Trust Exchange platform for addressing AI-accelerated cyber risk.
14. Lisa Su
Chair, CEO
AMD
Not too long ago, AMD answered the question of whether it could go toe-to-toe against Intel in the microprocessor world. Now the question is, can AMD compete head-on with Nvidia in the GPU business? Su has made sure that the answer to that question is a solid yes as AMD chips away at Nvidia’s lead in AI inference.
13. Tomer Weingarten
Co-Founder, CEO
SentinelOne
Under the leadership of Weingarten, SentinelOne has doubled down on helping partners to protect AI usage and begin enabling the shift to a truly agentic Security Operations Center. Recent moves included debuting a portfolio of new AI security offerings and expanding the capabilities of its AI SIEM platform.
12. Thomas Kurian
CEO
Google Cloud
Kurian led the creation of the new Google Cloud Partner Network this year to focus the channel’s efforts on providing successful customer outcomes across their life cycle, backed by a $750 million partner fund targeting AI opportunities. He was also key to Google’s largest acquisition in its history with the purchase of cloud security star Wiz this year, which he’s now in charge of as part of Google Cloud.
11. Nikesh Arora
Chairman, CEO
Palo Alto Networks
Arora has continued to spearhead the drive for Palo Alto Networks to become a single platform for AI-powered cybersecurity, with the company adding to its platform through a string of recent acquisitions including the $25 billion deal for identity security powerhouse CyberArk. Key product launches, meanwhile, have included the debut of an SMB-focused secure browser, the Prisma Browser for Business.
10. Yang Yuanqing
Chairman, CEO
Lenovo
Yang made Lenovo’s history books in 2026 by generating $21.6 billion in sales for its recent fourth-quarter earnings, up 27 percent year over year, representing the company’s largest growth rate in five years. He’s also made several acquisitions this year, including data storage provider Infinidat to boost its enterprise business and Phoenix Technologies’ BIOS firmware business to strengthen its PC portfolio.
9. Rajiv Ramaswami
CEO
Nutanix
Ramaswami continues to have hundreds of new customers come to Nutanix quarter after quarter, including over 700 new clients in its recent third quarter of 2026. From Nutanix’s new Agent Gateway offering to its Agentic AI full-stack software platform, Ramaswami is on a mission to win over VMware by Broadcom clients and make Nutanix into a platform star in the AI era.
8. Arvind Krishna
Chairman, CEO
IBM
Krishna has mastered the balancing act of modernizing a 115-year-old technology icon, keeping IBM at the forefront of AI, hybrid cloud and technology’s next breakthrough, quantum computing. A relentless focus on innovation equips partners with a differentiated portfolio and road map to help customers navigate the industry’s biggest technology shifts.
7. Chuck Robbins
Chair, CEO
Cisco Systems
If networking is what comes to mind when thinking about Cisco, it’s time to expand your thinking. While Cisco is still the heavyweight when it comes to infrastructure hardware, Robbins has brought a solid focus on cloud and AI, particularly with its new Cisco Cloud Control, a unified platform spanning the company’s networking, security and observability portfolios.
6. Satya Nadella
Chairman, CEO
Microsoft
Nadella transformed Microsoft into a pillar of the cloud era and now he’s propelled the company to the epicenter of the AI revolution. Copilot, Azure and other parts of the Microsoft portfolio deliver wave after wave of innovation with enormous partner opportunities around productivity, modernization and internal efficiency.
5. Michael Dell
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Dell Technologies
Never bet against Michael Dell. The indefatigable founder has taken a PC company he started in his college dorm room 41 years ago into becoming an undisputed AI infrastructure leader from the PC to the enterprise. There is no leader who has better technology and business smarts or who is better at leading big technology changes like the AI industrial revolution.
4. George Kurtz
Co-Founder, CEO
CrowdStrike
Led by Kurtz, CrowdStrike has invested to provide foundational platforms for partners to fully capitalize on the massive cybersecurity growth opportunities ahead in AI and agents. Meanwhile, CrowdStrike has continued to see surging growth in its comprehensive Falcon platform under Kurtz’s leadership, including across identity protection, Next-Gen SIEM and exposure management.
3. Antonio Neri
President, CEO
HPE
The technology visionary’s big bets on hybrid cloud, AI and networking are paying off big time for HPE. Eight years after taking the CEO post, HPE has more than succeeded in what Neri calls making partners relevant with a differentiated technology stack. Partners say the HPE portfolio has never been better.
2. Jensen Huang
Founder, President, CEO
Nvidia
No one has done more to make the AI revolution profitable for partners than Huang. The technology rock star who signs his company’s game-changing creations at industry conferences continues to ratchet up the benefits of AI while also driving down the cost curve. The company’s Vera Rubin CPU is destined to forever change the AI landscape.
1. Matt Garman
CEO
Amazon Web Services
Garman has driven AWS to become a leader in the AI era as he continues to bet on innovation and channel partners.
Led by Garman, the world’s largest cloud company generated a record $37.6 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2026, propelling AWS’ annual run rate to exceed $150 billion for the first time.
AWS’ CEO is making bullish moves on the AI model openness front by inking blockbuster partnerships and deals with the biggest providers, including Anthropic signing a $100 billion deal for AWS capacity, as well as making OpenAI’s most advanced models available on Amazon Bedrock. OpenAI and Amazon are now collaborating to develop customized models available to Amazon developers to power Amazon’s customer-facing applications.
In an interview with CRN in late 2025, Garman called partners “the lifeblood” of AWS clients.
“Folks from the very largest systems integrators … all the way down to individual and smaller SIs, they are the lifeblood of helping us in AWS connect our technology into our customers to really deliver that value,” he said.
In 2026, Garman led AWS’ channel team to launch a slew of new AI programs, incentives and AI tools inside the AWS Partner Network to make partners richer for driving AI solutions into production.
Garman’s partner dedication, AI vision and industry-leading cloud AI innovation strategy have earned him the top spot as the No. 1 Most Influential executive on CRN’s Top 100 Executives list for 2026.
