Exhibit 99.1
Elastic Promotes Ashutosh Kulkarni to CEO
Shay Banon Reassumes Role of Chief Technology Officer and Continues as Board Member
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—12 January 2022—Elastic (NYSE: ESTC) (“Elastic”), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, today announced the promotion of Ashutosh (Ash) Kulkarni to CEO and his nomination to the Board of Directors. Kulkarni will succeed Founder and CEO Shay Banon, who reassumes the role of Chief Technology Officer, and will continue to serve on the Board of Directors.
Banon, who served as CTO prior to being named CEO five years ago, stepped down from his role as Chairman of the Board. Chetan Puttagunta, currently Lead Independent Director, has been appointed Chairman.
“I couldn’t be more excited for Ash to become CEO. I’ve seen him in action for the past year and I know that his focused and empathetic leadership style combined with his executional and operational excellence will enable him to successfully lead Elastic,” said Shay Banon, CTO, Elastic. “Elastic is my life’s work, and in my role as CTO, I’ll be laser-focused on innovation and product, and people and culture—where my greatest passions lie, while Ash leads Elastic to realize its full potential. Our continued partnership will bring our employees, customers, and community the best of both worlds.”
“Ash’s success driving the growth of Elastic’s cloud business and building strong relationships across the entire Elastic customer base made his promotion to CEO a natural choice for the Board,” said Chetan Puttagunta, Chairman and Lead Independent Director, Elastic. “The Board unanimously chose Ash after seeing the exceptional product innovations and customer growth he delivered over the past year.”
Since joining Elastic as chief product officer in January 2021, Kulkarni has been the architect of Elastic’s growing focus on its Cloud business, and of the strategy behind its solutions in the areas of Observability, Security, and Enterprise Search. He has brought a renewed emphasis on user experience and customer success, especially with a view to helping drive frictionless growth in the cloud.
Prior to Elastic, Kulkarni held senior product leadership and management roles at McAfee, Akamai, Informatica, and Sun Microsystems.
“I am honored and excited to follow in Shay’s footsteps as CEO and lead Elastic through our next chapter of growth,” said Ashutosh Kulkarni, CEO, Elastic. “We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us as the markets we operate in continue to grow, and as the volume and complexity of data continues to explode. From Observability and Security to Enterprise Search, Elastic is helping thousands of customers use the power of search to extract value from their data in more intuitive ways than ever before. And Elastic Cloud is helping them do this with greater scale, speed, and relevance than ever before.”