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The technology CEO role has never been more stretched, with pace, change, scrutiny, and complexity higher than ever. Our research shows CEO turnover in tech companies rose by 21% in 2024, the sharpest increase recorded since we began tracking in 2018. These aren’t underqualified leaders, but some of the most accomplished executives in the market. So why is CEO churn so high?
The issue isn’t intelligence, commitment, or technical expertise. It’s that the leadership requirements of today look very different from those that defined success in the past and leaders who don’t adapt are being left behind.
The shift is perhaps most striking in the data center industry. A decade ago, most CEOs in the sector were founders or long-tenured operators focused on reliability, efficiency, and scale, an approach that delivered stability, but predated the hyperscale, private capital, and AI revolutions that have made data centers central to the global economy.
"The data center ecosystem has quite a range of companies in it," says Sean Roberts, leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA). "You've got the established scale players, while at the other end of the spectrum, you've got entrepreneurs—individuals that have built single locations, or in some cases multiple locations in different geographies. Those businesses are now on a journey to professionalize."
Today, the sector is a complex ecosystem. Demand for AI-ready capacity is soaring. Energy constraints are tightening. Regulatory and geopolitical scrutiny are intensifying. And investors are applying unprecedented pressure for both growth and resilience.
As Sam Smith, leadership advisor at RRA, puts it: "This is the gold rush of our time. During a gold rush, sell shovels. AI is the gold rush and the data centers are the shovels and picks."
The velocity of change has transformed the data center leadership mandate, which helps explain why turnover is rising. Boards are no longer looking for CEOs who can “run” data center facilities; they want leaders who can navigate this convergence of technical, financial, and societal forces.
In this industry, the cost of misalignment is high: strategic drift, delayed build-outs, and lost investor confidence can quickly erode a company’s license to operate.
The data center landscape spans a wide spectrum—from institutionalized global operators to subscale, founder-led businesses now professionalizing for the first time. While there’s no single archetype of success, effective CEOs share one trait: breadth. They must see the entire system, connecting construction, operations, finance, and client ecosystems into a coherent, optimized whole.
"The number of different dimensions that you're expecting CEOs to engage in has become more multidimensional, more complex," Sean observes. He points to power as the primary constraint currently facing the industry, alongside new considerations around community engagement. "These used to be anonymous, built on the outskirts of towns. Now, both the physical scale and profile means that you see communities having strong views."
In this new environment, technical expertise is assumed. The CEOs thriving today are those who can combine commercial fluency, organizational discipline, and social intelligence to mobilize capital, customers, and culture at scale. It’s these skills that define the leaders succeeding right now (and should be prioritized when hiring your next CEO).
Relationships with hyperscalers now underpin every growth strategy. Dan Cullen, leadership advisor at RRA, is emphatic on this point: “They really need to prioritize the relationship piece with hyperscale. It's absolutely essential. Without that, you don't have a business plan."
The challenge is unprecedented. "You've got a handful of buyers that dictate the whole market," Sean explains. "This is pretty unusual. The CEOs typically play a very key role in negotiations." These negotiations require more than just relationship capital. "The CEOs that are doing best in those discussions have a deep understanding of the industry dynamics, and what's generating the need to find that leverage in the negotiation."
Modern CEOs must combine technical credibility with deal-making instincts—engaging directly with cloud and AI providers, understanding their evolving requirements and translating those into development priorities and funding decisions. Investors back leaders who can move quickly, attract capital and deliver value creation through commercial influence.
Many data center companies remain high-growth ventures with immature systems and governance. Sam describes the transformation: "The operational rigor and pace required is greater than ever before, because of the mix of private capital and the speed at which sites need to come online. Private capital is demanding more operational CEOs, more obvious returns."
The pressure is relentless. "We're in a place where we need to create capacity and sell that capacity at the exact same time," Sam adds. "That's new for these executives. It used to be we created capacity and sold it as it came online. Now, capacity's being sold at a rate faster than it can be created, for billions and billions of dollars globally."
As founders increasingly transition out or step up to chair roles, CEOs must professionalize these organizations—building scalable processes, robust HR and finance functions, and boards that can steer growth responsibly.
The challenge is to institutionalize without dulling entrepreneurial agility. CEOs distinguish themselves when they balance rigor with the imagination to adapt as technology and capital flows evolve.
Leadership charisma, once considered a soft trait, has become a decisive advantage. Sam is clear about what's changed: "There's something about charisma and outward-facing leadership skills required in these executives. Ten years ago, when these were effectively real estate assets, it was a different style of business. Now, you're attracting a technology investor, not as much a real estate investor, and selling into the top technology companies."
Today's CEOs must sell the vision not just to hyperscalers and investors, but to their own teams. With billions of dollars chasing scarce expertise, specialist talent can now choose among multiple billion-dollar platforms. "If there are five great chief commercial officers in data centers, and there are probably 20-25 players that could win more market share, maybe 10-12 are top players," Sam explains. "These individuals have been building relationships with top hyperscale and enterprise customers for 15-20 years, and now they've become highly desirable talent."
The CEOs who succeed attract, inspire and retain world-class specialists. They are outward-facing leaders who convey urgency with clarity and conviction. As Sam puts it: "You have to be a great recruiter. The war for talent in this space is more intense than ever before."
Boards across the sector face a structural dilemma: they know what “great” looks like, but the pool of qualified leaders is small. Most individuals with the ideal blend of experience are already in post, backed by private capital, and tied to their current investors.
"There is a shortage of leadership talent within the data center industry itself," Sean notes. The question boards face is stark: "Do you bring someone who's outside of the industry, but would be strong on many of those other leadership dimensions? Or do you stick within industry, where it's a very narrow talent pool and where compensation expectations have run away?"
There is also the "been-there-done-that" dilemma. Sam describes the challenge: "There isn't a lot of available talent that's been at this growth level. How do you identify great step-ups—people ready to step into the CEO chair for the first time?"
The most forward-thinking boards and investors are addressing this early. Some are starting to look beyond the industry to bring in specialized expertise. Sean observes the trend: "It is happening on the Excos and accelerating rapidly. You see CROs coming from software, for example. You're seeing construction directors come from EPCs, or from renewables or utilities. You're seeing operations directors start to come from more mature technologies like telco."
But CEO appointments from outside the industry ultimately remain rare. Boards see both risk and opportunity in broadening the aperture. Near-adjacent experience in cloud, software, or enterprise technology can add value, but the further from the ecosystem, the greater the execution risk. The most successful transitions pair external perspective with deep sector insight elsewhere in the team, ensuring critical relationships with hyperscalers and investors are preserved.
Beyond this, boards are also building succession pipelines and leadership benches well before a transition is needed. They view leadership development and succession as central to value creation, and they are moving beyond “who’s available?” to “how do we build readiness?”
The last decade focused on expansion; the next will demand orchestration and efficiency. The coming era will demand leaders who can look beyond today's gold rush and build businesses that prize optimization, resilience and performance alongside growth.
Success will hinge on three things: placing the right bets, adapting to relentless technological change and building the organizational infrastructure to scale responsibly. Sam frames the challenge simply: "If I give you $5 billion today, what are you going to do with it? That's what CEOs are being asked."
Those who are successful will anticipate where demand will land – placing informed bets on new markets, energy sources and technology partners—then adjusting course as conditions evolve. They'll need to balance growth with efficiency, running geographically dispersed estates while ensuring uptime and maintaining profitability as power and sustainability constraints tighten.
But perhaps the greatest challenge is flexibility. Chip technologies are evolving at breakneck pace. Compute demand is shifting. Regulatory frameworks are tightening. Leaders must ensure their facilities and strategies can adapt quickly, designing organizations, and physical assets, capable of flexing with the industry's next wave of transformation.
The next-generation data center CEO is, above all, an integrator—someone who can translate between engineers and investors, regulators and hyperscalers, local markets and global strategy. They must be commercially fluent, technically credible and organizationally mature. But their greatest asset will be judgment: the ability to orchestrate people, capital and trust at scale.
Boards that align behind this new leadership model will capture extraordinary value. Those that don't will find themselves trapped between ambition and execution, watching more agile competitors move faster. In the race to build the infrastructure of the AI age, ultimately, technology will be the arena, but leadership will decide the outcome.
Dan Cullen is a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates and a core member of our Technology Practice. He is based in Singapore.
Sean Roberts is a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates and a core member of our Technology Practice. He is based in London.
Sam Smith is a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates and a core member of our Technology Practice. He is based in Chicago and San Francisco.
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