GM Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson during the automaker’s “GM Forward” event on October 22, 2025 in New York City.
GM
DETROIT – General Motors’ The newest product and technology executive said he views the Detroit automaker as a canvas. One that can be curated, retouched, or even torn apart.
After about six months as executive vice president and chief product officer, Sterling Anderson appears to be putting all three ideas into action as he oversees the company’s extensive product portfolio, from the vehicles themselves to the software that powers them.
Anderson, who left the self-driving car company Aurora Innovation The company he co-founded and joined GM in June has quickly become the most influential product manager alongside GM President Mark Reuss in more than 15 years.
GM said he has consolidated power to oversee the “end-to-end product life cycle” of GM vehicles, including manufacturing engineering, battery, software and service product management, and engineering teams.
“My priority is to accelerate the pace of innovation. One way to do that is to separate this abstraction of software from hardware,” he told CNBC during an Oct. 22 technology event in New York. “I think that’s the purpose of this role, to bring all of these pieces together into a unified approach to future product development.”
Since then, the company’s renowned software and artificial intelligence leaders have unexpectedly left the company after relatively short tenures. Her primary vehicle-related responsibilities now fall to 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.
Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors (right to left), Mark Reuss, President, Sterling Anderson, Chief Product Officer, and Dave Richardson, Senior Vice President Software and Services Engineering at “GM Forward” on Wednesday, October 22, 2025 in New York.
GM
“We are strategically integrating AI capabilities directly into our business and product organizations, enabling faster innovation and more targeted solutions,” a GM spokeswoman said in an email statement last week about Turovsky’s departure.
It’s another clue to Anderson’s strategy. He previously told CNBC that for GM’s success, software and product must be viewed as one and the same, rather than as separate entities, as has been the case in recent years.
Anderson said he spent the first few months of his GM tenure “in listening mode,” immersing himself in the automaker’s operations.
“These five months of listening have allowed me to really fine-tune and target the way we’re going to do it, not just what we’re going to innovate, but how we’re going to do it,” he said in the October interview.
A third executive is also leaving the company soon, as Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management, will be leaving the company effective Dec. 12, as first reported by CNBC.
Unlike Richardson and Turovsky, the company did not attribute his departure to 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.
“Silicon Valley Cowboy”
Anderson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, turned around Tesla Before joining GM, the executive said he thought of the automaker as more of a comedic caricature than a canvas that he would transform into a modern masterpiece.
Anderson said CEO Mary Barra and Reuss, to whom he reported, helped him dispel the caricature of the “old automotive world” and concerns that automaker employees weren’t supportive of his efforts.
“I was really worried about that, wasn’t I? I’m the cowboy from Silicon Valley coming to Detroit and navigating an innovation story with a team that I feared wouldn’t do well. I found it very different than I expected,” Anderson said.
His appointment represents a refocus for the automaker on software-defined vehicles and autonomy. He said GM’s goal is to build an autonomous vehicle, a year after the company wound down its majority-owned Cruise AV business after years of development and billions of dollars in capital.
New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra speak onstage during the 2025 New York Times Dealbook Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 3, 2025 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
“Just be clear: We are developing a self-driving product,” he told CNBC. “It is a self-driving product that can be safe in safety-critical situations without recourse to humans.”
Barra on Wednesday cited Anderson and the automaker’s previous efforts in autonomous vehicles as reasons that GM is “well positioned” to achieve autonomous highway driving with its vehicles starting in 2028.
“When we talk about artificial intelligence, autonomous driving is one of the ultimate applications that I still firmly believe in,” Barra said at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit, confirming the automaker’s plans for “personal autonomous vehicles” instead of cruise robotaxis.
Anderson is considered a leading expert in vehicle autonomy. Before co-founding the self-driving company Aurora, he led Tesla’s Model X program and the team that developed the advanced driver assistance system Autopilot. He also developed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Intelligent Co-Pilot, a semi-autonomous vehicle safety system.
Anderson, who holds a master’s and Ph.D. He has a doctorate in robotics from MIT and said it took several conversations for him to leave Aurora, which he believed would mean he “would die.”
He is not alone in his change of heart; However, not many lasted long with the automaker. Several other current and former Silicon Valley executives have expressed similar optimism about GM and its longtime CEO and president – both of whom have spent their entire careers at the automaker as “GM lifers.”
Richardson had previously hailed working for Barra, to whom he reported before Anderson, as “an opportunity of a lifetime”. Cetinok previously described his position as a “product person’s dream” in an interview with CNBC.
Jens Peter “JP” Clausen, who led Tesla’s manufacturing expansion and worked at Lego and Google, cited the “opportunity to work for an executive like” Barra as part of his reason for joining GM as production manager before unexpectedly leaving after just a year.
The awards went both ways. When Anderson’s appointment to GM was announced in May, Barra and Reuss hailed Anderson’s ability to “evolve” and “reinvent” the automaker’s operations.
In addition to Anderson’s new product unit, Reuss continues to lead the automaker’s manufacturing, design, marketing and sales, among other roles.
Technical managers
The global auto industry has struggled for years to better integrate technology into vehicles – from production to consumer-focused software to remote or “over-the-air” updates, as pioneered by Tesla.
GM has taken an aggressive approach to technology, hiring executives from Tesla and companies like Apple And Google. However, these executives often only worked at the company for a short period of time, such as the last three departures.
“[Traditional U.S. automakers] “I had significant difficulty understanding software and electronics technology, and that led to them hosting a series of experts with the quote ‘Come to help,'” said Peter Abowd, an engineer turned automotive and technology consultant.
Abowd, general manager of engineering excellence at consulting firm Envorso, attributed the staff turnover to “a misapplication of skills and talents” as well as unrealistic expectations and overwhelming responsibilities in a company as large as GM and an industry as complex as the automotive world.
“It just sets the person up for a little failure,” Abowd said. “You can’t culturally change an organization in a few years…so the best thing to do is to part ways.”
This type of turnover has caused automakers like GM to regularly pivot into other directions, including vehicle technologies, electric vehicle batteries, and other areas that are not traditionally part of the “core core” of the automotive industry.
Barra, GM’s longest-serving CEO since the company’s founding, is known for hiring executives at opportune times based on the company’s top priorities, which now appear to fall largely to Anderson.
According to Anderson, GM is “really good at a lot of things” that aren’t necessarily obvious to outsiders. He said he believes combining his experience with fast-moving companies like Tesla and Aurora, as well as GM’s “massive machine” and resources, will better position the automaker for the future.
“I look at it as a canvas,” Anderson said. “This is an extraordinary opportunity for innovation and I wouldn’t be sure what I could do about it.”
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