GM’s new product chief Sterling Anderson eyes technology renaissance for

DETROIT — General Motors’ newest product and technology executive has said he thinks of the Detroit automaker as a canvas. One that can be curated, retouched or even torn apart.

After roughly six months as executive vice president and chief product officer, Sterling Anderson appears to be putting all three ideas to work as he oversees the company’s vast product portfolio — from the vehicles themselves to the software powering them.

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

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

“My priority is to accelerate the pace of innovation. One of the ways we do that is with this disaggregation of, or this abstraction of, software from hardware,” he told CNBC during an Oct. 22 technology event in New York. “That’s the point of the role, I think, is it brings together all of these pieces into a unified approach to how we do product going forward.”

Since then, the company’s acclaimed heads of software and artificial intelligence have unexpectedly exited the company after relatively short tenures. Their main responsibilities related to vehicles now fall under Anderson.

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

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

It’s another indication of Anderson’s strategy. He previously told CNBC that for GM to succeed, software and product must be thought of as one and the same rather than as separate units, like they have been in recent years.

Anderson said he spent the first months of his GM tenure “in a listen mode,” immersing himself in the automaker’s operations.

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

A third executive is also leaving soon, as Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management, will depart the company effective Dec. 12, as first reported by CNBC.

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

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

Anderson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant turned Tesla executive, said before he joined GM, he had thought of the automaker more of a comedic caricature rather than a canvas that he would help turn into a modern masterpiece.

Anderson said CEO Mary Barra and Reuss, whom he reports to, helped him break down that “old-world automotive” caricature and concerns about employees of the automaker not supporting his efforts.

“I was really worried about it, right? I’m the ‘Silicon Valley cowboy’ that’s coming into Detroit and, you know, ‘pew pewing’ his way through an innovation story with a team that I was concerned wouldn’t receive that well. I found it quite different from what I’d expected,” Anderson said.

His appointment is a refocus for the automaker on software-defined vehicles and autonomy. He said GM’s goal is to build an autonomous vehicle, which comes a year after the company disbanded its majority-owned Cruise AV business following years of development and billions of dollars in capital.

“Just…