Sunny Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Bellevue-based software company Apptio, is stepping down after a 17-year run leading the company.
Gupta announced the move Thursday on LinkedIn, noting that current Apptio President Larry Blasko and Chief Operating Officer Ajay Patel will assume leadership of the company. The move comes after Apptio sold to IBM in August for $4.6 billion.
"We transformed an industry, created a new software category that will live beyond our lifetimes," Gupta wrote in the post. "Best days of Apptio are ahead under IBM leadership and I am so excited to stay engaged through the next phase of the journey."
Gupta said in the post he will step into the chairman emeritus role at Apptio and will remain a strategic adviser to IBM. Kurt Shintaffer, Apptio's chief financial officer, is the company's other co-founder.
In an email to the Business Journal, an Apptio spokesperson said Shintaffer is also transitioning out of his leadership position, but the Bellevue office will remain, and IBM is "investing in new talent in Bellevue and other Apptio regions."
"Apptio will remain an intact business within IBM software and a vital part of the overall IBM software portfolio," the spokesperson said in the email.
Apptio, founded in 2007, helps clients monitor the return they're getting on their tech spending. The company has more than 1,800 clients, including Chevron, MetLife and FedEx. In December 2022, Apptio acquired the Austin, Texas-based cloud costs savings company Cloudwiry for an undisclosed amount.
Apptio went public in 2016 but was acquired in 2019 by Austin-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $1.94 billion. The companies announced the subsequent acquisition by IBM in June of last year. In 2022, Apptio shed about 28,000 square feet of office space in Bellevue but still had over 60,100 square feet of space at Plaza East.
After the deal with IBM closed, Gupta told the Business Journal the acquisition would boost Apptio's influence.
"Since we were founded, my vision has always been how do I take Apptio's software to companies of all sizes," Gupta said at the time. "We'll be able to drive ubiquity and faster scale of Apptio into the market than we would have been able to do on our own."
