GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke to step down by year-end after four years at the helm

GitHub was early to artificial intelligence technology capable of automating parts of software development.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke will step down by year-end after leading the Microsoft-owned code hosting platform for nearly four years, the company announced on August 11.

Interestingly, Microsoft isn’t replacing Dohmke’s CEO position, and GitHub will now be fully part of Microsoft instead of being run as a separate entity.

“After all this time, my startup roots have begun tugging on me, and I’ve decided to leave GitHub to become a founder again. GitHub and its leadership team will continue its mission as part of Microsoft’s CoreAI organization, with more details shared soon,” Dohmke wrote on GitHub’s blog post, citing an internal post he sent to employees earlier.

GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in 2018, has been infusing AI capabilities with a slew of new products and feature enhancements across every step of the developer lifecycle in the past few years.

India remains GitHub’s fastest-growing market, with over 18 million developers as of April 2025, up from 17 million in October 2024. The country is the second-largest contributor to open-source projects and public Generative AI (Gen AI) projects on the platform, recording a 79 percent year-on-year growth in the latter since 2024.

Also read: GitHub is adding one million developers in India every 3 months: COO Kyle Daigle

Globally, GitHub had more than 150 million developers as of December 2024.

In the recent interview with Moneycontrol, Dohmke said AI would not replace developers but instead create more work, adding that the company’s AI focus is aimed at assisting coders across every stage of the development lifecycle.

He further said that the company has seen more open-source projects with contributions increasing every year. AI projects have doubled in the last year alone, and GitHub's presence in companies of any size is unmatched in the market.

"The GitHub platform has continued to lead with incredible momentum. We massively improved accessibility and availability, brought GitHub to the EU, Australia," he further added in the blog post.