Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, has announced that he will be stepping down at the end of 2025. Dohmke wants to refocus his efforts on founding a new company. Until then, he will remain in his position to ensure a smooth transition.
Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018. However, the developer platform had an independent position within the Microsoft organization. It had its own CEO and other executives in Dohmke. However, it appears that GitHub will be fully integrated into Microsoft’s organizational structure starting next year, now that the CEO has announced his departure. He wants to return to entrepreneurship.
In a message to employees, Dohmke said he was proud of GitHub’s development in recent years. Since he took office, he said, the company has made great strides in AI and developer tools. Dohmke specifically mentioned the introduction and growth of GitHub Copilot. The platform now has more than 150 million developers and 1 billion repositories and forks. AI projects on the platform have doubled in the past year.
Under his leadership, GitHub Advanced Security and GitHub Actions have also been further expanded. According to GitHub, Advanced Security has reduced the average time to fix vulnerabilities by 60 percent. GitHub Actions now processes 3 billion minutes per month, an increase of 64 percent compared to a year earlier.
Copilot grew from a simple autocomplete tool to an integrated AI assistant with voice and chat capabilities, code analysis, bug fixes, and full application creation. The number of users has grown to over 20 million.
One billion developers
The outgoing CEO says we are heading toward a world with one billion developers, supported by billions of AI agents. These agents would each bear the stamp of human ingenuity and create a new software gold rush. Dohmke emphasizes that this development has been made possible in part by GitHub, as the platform has made AI development accessible to everyone. This is independent of the programming language used by the developer or their programming skills.
GitHub will remain part of Microsoft and will be housed within the CoreAI organization. Further details will be announced at a later date.
Dohmke was GitHub’s second CEO under Microsoft and had held that position since late 2021, when former CEO Nat Friedman left the company. Prior to that, Dohmke was chief product officer at GitHub.