Red Hat's CEO is succeeded by its former Executive Vice President of Products and Technology Projects, and the company will focus more on software and hybrid cloud technology research and development in the future.

Red HatAnnounceMatt Hicks, the executive vice president of products and technology projects, will take over as CEO, and Paul Cormier, who has served as CEO since April 2020, will become the chairman of Red Hat.

Matt Hicks joined Red Hat in 2006 as a developer within the IT team. He subsequently demonstrated strong leadership within the organization and helped transform Red Hat into a provider of open source hybrid cloud architecture technologies. Furthermore, as a founding member of OpenShift, Red Hat's Platform as a Service (PaaS), Matt Hicks is deeply familiar with Red Hat's technology development and product planning.

Matt Hicks' appointment as CEO to lead Red Hat also means that Red Hat will focus more on software technology development in the future and strengthen its hybrid cloud architecture technology layout.

Paul Cormier will later become chairman of Red Hat and report to IBM CEO Arvind Krishna along with Matt Hicks.