General Motors Co.’s first Chief AI Officer (CAIO) departure after less than a year — another in a growing list of artificial intelligence (AI) executives leaving their posts prematurely — illustrates how organizations increasingly are grappling with AI in the C-suite.
Barak Turovsky announced his exit from GM over the weekend, ending an eight-month tenure for the veteran tech executive who previously worked at PayPal Holdings Inc., Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Cisco Systems Inc. He said he plans to take a sabbatical to pursue new ideas.
As for GM, the automaker is not replacing Turovsky’s position. Instead, it is folding its AI team into the manufacturing engineering organization, a strategic shift in how it approaches AI development.
“We are strategically integrating AI capabilities directly into our business and product organizations, enabling faster innovation and more targeted solutions,” a GM spokesperson said.
Industry analysts said Turovsky’s truncated stewardship reflects broader uncertainty about the Chief AI Officer role. Like the evolution of chief information officer (CIO) and chief digital officer (CDO) in previous decades, companies are still determining where AI leadership fits within organizational hierarchies and whether it warrants C-suite representation.
Nonetheless, the CAIO position has proliferated rapidly across corporate America as businesses and government agencies slavishly pursue AI. More than one-quarter of organizations now have a chief AI officer, up from just 11% in 2023, according to recent data. However, the newness of the role means many companies are experimenting with different structures. Despite 2024’s record CEO turnover, specific reporting on CAIO departures remains limited, likely because only 14% of organizations currently have the role.
In December, Apple Inc. said its AI chief, John Giannandrea, will step down from his role following a turbulent period for the tech giant’s AI ambitions — the most significant leadership change in Apple’s AI division since the company unveiled Apple Intelligence in 2024.
Yann LeCun, Meta Platform Inc.’s chief AI scientist and one of the pioneers of modern AI, announced this month he is leaving to launch his own startup focused on world models and advanced machine intelligence research. LeCun aims to develop AI systems that can understand the physical world, maintain persistent memory, reason, and plan complex actions.
Intel Corp.’s chief technology and AI officer, Sachin Katti, left after just six months to join OpenAI, where he will work on building compute infrastructure for artificial general intelligence. Katti previously led Intel’s networking and Edge group for four years before his brief stint in the combined CTO/AI officer role.
Beyond the private sector, government agencies have experienced similar turnover in AI leadership. Lisa Einstein resigned as Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) CAIO in February, just six months after her appointment. Jonathan Mayer departed the Justice Department’s CAIO position in January after less than a year in the role. David Larrimore, who served as chief technology officer (CTO) and CAIO at the Department of Homeland Security, left in April.
Theories abound over why some CAIOs are calling it quits — or being pushed aside — in less than a year.
Several experts believe the role has a built-in expiration date. Glen McCracken, head of data analytics and automation at ION Analytics, compares CAIOs to chief ecommerce officers who vanished once online sales became central to business rather than a side project.
The position also faces structural challenges. MIT Sloan Management Review notes that cross-functional roles like CAIO are notoriously difficult to navigate. One pharmaceutical company’s chief data officer created costly overlaps with data science and IT teams, and when budget cuts came, many digital experts were eliminated or absorbed into IT.
A Harvard Business Review study goes even further: It concludes that assigning a C-level title to take on the next challenge for the business is only a small step to defining and implementing a game change strategy or technology. AI is as much of an organization and business leaders challenge as it is a revolutionary technology, it said.
Some argue the CEO should own AI strategy instead. Emburse CEO Marne Martin contends that when change is this fundamental, the CEO needs to be driving. She draws parallels to the boom-and-bust cycle of chief cloud and digital officers a decade ago, roles that ultimately were absorbed into CIO or CTO positions.
The role itself lacks clear definition. Critics suggest CAIOs often embed AI everywhere rather than solving specific problems, bringing the hammer of AI to whatever nails are lying around.
As organizations continue to navigate the integration of AI into their operations, the fluidity of these executive positions suggests the industry is still in an experimental phase of determining optimal leadership structures for AI initiatives.
“Newly minted C-level positions can be a great opportunity. They can also be hazardous when the organization is unclear or not in agreement on its strategic direction. This is especially true with AI C-titled roles due to overinflated AI expectations,” said Mitch Ashley, vice president/practice lead of DevOps and AppDev at The Futurum Group.
“2026 is the year for AI productivity and business outcome metrics. Having a clear and agreed-upon AI strategy, albeit one that can adjust and adapt to the market and learning, is critical to success,” he said. “Organizations already producing positive ROI and outcome metrics in 2025 have these characteristics.”
