What Thomas Dohmke’s departure means for GitHub

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has announced plans to step down, with big changes expected at the software development platform.

In a blog post published 11 August, Dohmke revealed his “startup roots have begun tugging on me” and he plans to launch an as-of-yet unknown new venture.

Dohmke has served as chief executive at GitHub since 2021, having joined Microsoft six years prior following the acquisition of his startup, HockeyApp.

GitHub was later acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for a fee of $7.5 billion, with Dohmke first moving over to the newly-integrated business unit as product chief before replacing Nat Friedman as chief executive in November 2021.

“Over a decade ago, my family and I made the leap to move from Germany to the United States after the sale of my startup to Microsoft,” Dohmke wrote.

“In the years since, I’ve had the privilege of working with many exceptional human beings, including Hubbers, Microsofties, customers, partners, our GitHub Stars, open source maintainers, and developers around the world who’ve helped us shape GitHub."

Dohmke isn’t stepping down immediately. Indeed, he noted that he’ll be “staying through the end of 2025” to help guide the company’s transition.

Thomas Dohmke’s exit could mean big changes at GitHub

Big changes are afoot at GitHub following Dohmke’s decision to step down. While the business is already closely integrated with Microsoft, deeper integration appears to be coming, he revealed.

Notably, Dohmke won’t be replaced as chief executive and GitHub’s leadership team will now report to Microsoft’s CoreAI organization in a more direct manner.

First announced in January 2025, the CoreAI division at Microsoft focuses on AI platform and tool development, and is led by former Meta executive Jay Parikh.

Exact details on how this will work weren’t revealed by Dohmke. However, according to reports from CNBC, a memo distributed by Parikh suggests that the remaining GitHub executives will now report to Julia Liuson, formerly the head of Microsoft's developer division and now an executive at the CoreAI segment.

GitHub has grown rapidly under Dohmke

GitHub has grown rapidly in recent years, now boasting over 150 million registered developers and marking a sharp increase from 73 million in 2021.

Dohmke noted that the company has observed a consistent increase in open source projects while in the last year alone the number of AI projects has doubled.

“With more than 1B repos and forks, and over 150 million developers, GitHub has never been stronger than it is today,” he said.

While the company’s flagship product, Copilot, was launched when Friedman served as chief executive, it’s under Dohmke’s leadership that the coding support tool has become increasingly popular.

Copilot now has over 20 million users, according to Dohmke, and a consistent flow of new features have been added in recent years.

As Dohmke points out, last year the company became the “first multi-model solution” at Microsoft, allowing developers to draw on a range of options, including those from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

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