Welcoming Inhi Cho Suh as CEO of Niantic Spatial

Today John Hanke shared the update below with the Niantic Spatial team, announcing that Inhi Cho Suh is joining as Chief Executive Officer and that he will become Executive Chairman.

"The Niantic Spatial team has a rare combination of world-class research and technology alongside a set of customers that represent where AI is heading next – the real world.  We have the opportunity to lead this next phase of AI and I can't wait to get to work scaling the business and building something lasting alongside this team." – Inhi Cho Suh

“I could not be more excited about where Niantic Spatial is right now. My belief is that AI is a fundamentally transformative technology and that physical AI in particular will play a massive role in a reinvented global economy. Niantic Spatial is positioned in the center of that transformation. Inhi is exactly the right leader to help the company realize that future." – John Hanke

All,

I have some important news to share: Inhi Cho Suh is joining Niantic Spatial as Chief Executive Officer, effective March 30, and I will take on the role of Executive Chairman.

This is the culmination of an extended search process undertaken with the board and an outside search firm and I’m very excited about finding Inhi to come in and take on this role.  I recognize this may be a surprising move to many of you and I want to share some of my thinking behind it.

First off, I could not be more excited about where Niantic Spatial is right now.  As I’ve shared with you all before, my belief is that AI is a fundamentally transformative technology and that physical AI in particular will play a massive role in a reinvented global economy.  Niantic Spatial is positioned in the center of that transformation.  Having said that, there is also a wave of hype and inflated expectations (and valuations) washing over the world of startups and venture capital.  While the opportunity is real, there will be a shakeout and the companies that emerge on the other side will be those that build growing and sustainable businesses on a foundation of breakthrough technical work.

Thanks to all of your work, we have both the technology foundation and the pipeline of customers to be one of those companies.  But there is also much work ahead in terms of building both the technology and the customer base to take us to that next level. I believe this is the right moment to bring in a new leader with the experience and drive to help us get there.

I’ve met with Inhi many times over the past several months. She has a unique combination of experience working with teams on deeply technical projects, alongside years of experience in scaling businesses big and small. She also approaches the work of building technology thoughtfully, with an eye on the role that it will play in society and the impact it will have.  My confidence in Inhi starts with trust in her as a person – and trust is a function of character.  I was deeply impressed by Inhi’s character, growing up as a Korean-American immigrant in the South and, through talent and hard work, rising from an entry level job at IBM writing technical documentation to a Vice President and General Manager of multiple billion dollar businesses, and then to many impressive experiences since.

On the technical side: Inhi has been close to hard technical problems her whole career.  She spent more than 20 years at IBM, first running the big data business, including Hadoop, machine learning, data warehousing – at a time when those technologies were just starting to take hold.  She worked as part of and with dozens of technical teams over the years.  She served as a board member for Coda, and is currently on the board of Otter.ai.

Inhi also has deep experience scaling businesses.  As President of DocuSign, she came in during a CEO leadership transition and grew their customer base from 1 million to 1.4 million paying organizations, took revenue from $2 billion to $3 billion, and delivered the company’s first ever full year of profit.  She ran IBM's global partnerships business – a $10 billion+ responsibility.

She serves on the board of AnitaB.org and the Grace Hopper Conference, the largest nonprofit for the advancement of women in STEM.

I believe Inhi is the right CEO for what we need right now – building the company that comes out of this moment with the strength and velocity to be one of the winners.  We have the ingredients we need to be successful, and to succeed, our company needs a high level of focus, intensity and urgency.  We are competing against other well-capitalized startups and established companies that want to win this market – and I believe we can and will win.

What I'll be doing

I’ve had an intense run over the last 20+ years from the founding of Keyhole through Niantic Spatial.  I feel privileged to have gotten to launch Niantic Spatial with all of you and now I’m looking to help, but in a different way than I have in the past.  I’ll still be working to make the company successful, but through the board and in my support of Inhi in her new role.  That will give me the space to be more thoughtful as we move into this period of massive technological change and the potential disruptions that will bring.

What is my new role and title?  I will be moving into the role of Executive Chairman, which encompasses both being Chairman of the Board, a role that I’ve held since the company was founded, and an ‘Executive” role, which means I’ll be working to help the company in certain areas on an operating basis.  Importantly, that will happen through Inhi, our new CEO, and will involve things like advising on product strategy, helping with sales and business development efforts, and select external communications.

But it’s important to understand that we’ll have one CEO, Inhi, and she’ll be running the company.  She’ll be taking the first few weeks to meet everyone and learn about the business. In the near term, our priorities and plans remain the same as we support her onboarding and transition.

Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to all of you for what we have built over the past 10 months, and what many of us have built together in some configuration over the past quarter century.  I look forward to continuing to contribute to Niantic Spatial, and supporting Inhi and the company in this new phase.

Welcome, Inhi.

-jh