GM New Products Chief Sterling Anderson looks forward to the technology renaissance

DETROIT — GM The newest product and technology executive said he views the Detroit automaker as a canvas. One that can be formatted, redacted, or even shredded.

Nearly six months into his tenure as executive vice president and chief product officer, Sterling Anderson appears to be putting all three ideas into action as he oversees the company’s broad product portfolio — from the vehicles themselves to the software that powers them.

Anderson, who left the self-driving car company Aurora Innovation Which he co-founded to join GM in June, has quickly become the most influential product executive in more than 15 years, outside of GM Chairman Mark Reuss.

He consolidated authority to oversee the “end-to-end product lifecycle” of GM vehicles, including manufacturing engineering, battery, software product management, services and engineering teams, according to GM.

“My priority is to accelerate the pace of innovation,” he told CNBC during a technology event on October 22 in New York. “And one of the ways we do that is through this separation of software from hardware.” “I think that’s the goal of the role, it’s bringing all of these pieces together into a unified approach to how we’re going to implement the product moving forward.”

Since then, the company’s popular software and AI heads have unexpectedly exited the company after a relatively short tenure. Their main vehicle-related responsibilities now fall to Anderson.

GM attributed the sudden departures of Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software engineering and services, and Barak Turovsky, head of artificial intelligence, to restructuring efforts.

“We are strategically integrating AI capabilities directly into our business organizations and products, enabling faster innovation and more targeted solutions,” a GM spokeswoman said of Turovsky’s departure in an email statement last week.

It’s another sign of Anderson’s strategy. He previously told CNBC that for GM to succeed, software and product must be viewed as one thing and not as separate units, as has been the case in recent years.

Anderson said he spent his first months at GM “in listening mode,” immersed in the automaker’s operations.

“What five months of listening has allowed me to do is fine-tune and define the way we’re going, not just what we’re going to innovate on, but how we’re going to do it,” he said in an October interview.

A third CEO will also depart soon, as Paris Cetinok, senior vice president of software product management and services, will leave the company effective December 12, as first reported by CNBC.

Unlike Richardson and Turovsky, the company did not attribute his departure to restructuring. Three sources familiar with the situation, who spoke anonymously because the discussion was private, told CNBC that Cetinuk left to pursue another opportunity.

Cetinuk, Richardson and Turovsky declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment about their departures. Cetinuk and Richardson joined GM in 2023, while Turovsky was hired in March.

Anderson, a former consultant to McKinsey & Co., converted Tesla Before joining GM, the executive said he thought of the automaker more as a comic caricature than a painting that he would help transform into a modern masterpiece.

Anderson said CEO Mary Barra and Royce, to whom he reports, helped him break down the “old world” caricature and concerns about the automaker’s employees not supporting his efforts.

“You were really worried about that, weren’t you? I’m a Silicon Valley cowboy coming to Detroit and, you know, working his way through an innovation story with a team that I was worried wouldn’t be well received. I found it very different from what I expected,” Anderson said.

His appointment marks a refocus for the automaker on software-defined and autonomous driving vehicles. GM’s goal is to build a self-driving car, he said, which comes a year after the company spun off its majority-owned Cruise AV business after years of development and billions of dollars in capital.

“Just be clear, we are developing a self-driving product,” he told CNBC. “It is a self-driving product that can be safe without any human obstructions in safety-critical situations.”

Barra on Wednesday cited Anderson and the automaker’s previous efforts in autonomous vehicles as reasons why GM is “well-positioned” to bring autonomous highway driving to its vehicles starting in 2028.

“As we talk about artificial intelligence, self-driving is one of the ultimate applications that I still believe very strongly in,” Barra said at the New York Times DealBook Summit, reaffirming the automaker’s “self-driving personal vehicle” plans instead of a robotaxi.

Anderson is one of the leading experts in the field of vehicle autonomy. Before co-founding autonomous driving company Aurora, he led Tesla’s Model He also developed MIT’s Intelligent Copilot, a semi-autonomous vehicle safety system.

Anderson, who holds master’s and Ph.D. The MIT robotics Ph.D. said it took several conversations for Aurora to leave, which he thought he was “going to die with.”

He’s not alone in his change of heart. But not many of them lasted long at the automaker. Several current and former Silicon Valley executives have expressed similar optimism about GM as well as its longtime CEO and president — both of whom spent their entire careers at the automaker as “GM professionals.”

Richardson previously praised working for Barra, who reported before Anderson, as an “opportunity of a lifetime.” Cetinuk previously described his position as “a productive person’s dream” in an interview with CNBC.

Jens Peter “JP” Clausen, who led Tesla’s manufacturing expansion and worked at Lego and Google, partly credited “the opportunity to work for a leader like” Barra as a reason for joining GM as head of manufacturing before an unexpected departure after just one year.

The awards have gone both ways. When Anderson’s appointment with GM was announced in May, Barra and Royce praised Anderson as equipped to “evolve” and “reinvent” the automaker’s operations.

In addition to the new Anderson Products unit, Royce continues to oversee the automaker’s manufacturing, design, marketing and sales operations, among other operations.

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

GM has taken an aggressive approach to technology by hiring leaders from Tesla and companies like apple and Google. However, more often than not, these executives have had short tenures with the company, such as the last three departures.

“[Traditional U.S. automakers] “They had a huge struggle understanding the software technology and electronics, so they had a parade of experts coming to help,” said Peter Aboud, an engineer turned automotive and technology consultant.

Abboud, managing director of engineering excellence at consulting firm Inforso, attributed executive turnover to “misapplication of skills and talent,” as well as unrealistic expectations and overwhelming responsibilities in a company as large as GM and an industry as complex as the automotive world.

“It just kind of sets the person up for a little bit of failure,” Abboud said. “In two years, you can’t bring about cultural change in an organization, so the best thing you can do is break up.”

This type of sales has led automakers like General Motors to regularly pivot in different directions, including in-car technologies, electric vehicle batteries and other areas that are not traditionally “core” to the auto industry.

Barra, GM’s longest-serving CEO since the company’s founder, has become known for hiring executives at opportunistic times based on the company’s top priorities, which now appear to fall largely under Anderson’s leadership.

GM is “really good at a lot of things” that aren’t necessarily obvious to those outside the company, according to Anderson. He said he believes combining his experience with fast-moving companies such as Tesla, Aurora and the “big machine” and resources of General Motors will put the automaker in a better position for the future.

“I look at it as a canvas,” Anderson said. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity to innovate, and I would be remiss if I didn’t see what I can do about it.”