GM software leader Baris Cetinok leaves post amid automaker restructuring

DETROIT – Third top tech executive leaves General engines amid a restructuring of the automaker’s software and product businesses, CNBC has learned.

Baris Cetinok, GM’s senior vice president of software product management and services, will leave the company effective Dec. 12, the automaker confirmed Tuesday after an internal announcement to employees.

Cetinok is the third tech-turned-automotive executive to leave GM in about a month, as the company consolidates its vehicle software engineering and global product units into a single organization, led by new chief product officer Sterling Anderson.

“Baris has built a strong software product management team at GM. We are grateful for his contributions and wish him continued success. With hardware and software engineering unified under Global Product, we are integrating product management with engineering to accelerate the delivery of exceptional in-car experiences,” GM said in an emailed statement to CNBC.

Cetinok, who joined GM in September 2023 after working at companies including Apple, Microsoft And Amazoncould not immediately be reached for comment. The announcement of his departure comes a month after he described his role as “a product manager’s dream” in an interview with CNBC.

GM’s senior vice president of software engineering and services, Dave Richardson, and his head of GM artificial intelligence, Barak Turovsky, have also left the company since October. Richardson worked at GM for more than two years, while Turovsky was hired in March.

Anderson left the self-driving company he co-founded, Aurore Innovationto join GM. He told CNBC last month that for the automaker to succeed, software and products must be viewed as one and the same.

“That’s the beauty of this role, I think, is that it brings all of these elements together into a unified approach to how we produce our products in the future,” Anderson said in an Oct. 22 interview at a GM technology event in New York.

Anderson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who later led that of Tesla AutoPilot program, said its goal is to accelerate the pace of GM’s innovations.

When Anderson’s appointment at GM was announced in May, Cetinok said in a LinkedIn post that he was “excited to welcome” the executive to the company. GM CEO Mary Barra and GM Chairman Mark Reuss also praised Anderson as equipped to “evolve” and “reinvent” the automaker’s operations.

The global auto industry has been fighting for years to better integrate technology into vehicles – from their production to consumer-facing software and remote or “over-the-air” updates, such as Tesla pioneer.

GM has taken an aggressive approach to addressing these challenges by hiring executives from Tesla and technology companies such as Apple and Google. However, these executives often had short tenures within the company.