Verizon Confirms Oath CEO Tim Armstrong Will Leave at End of 2018

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – It’s official: Tim Armstrong is stepping down as Oath’s CEO next month and will leave Verizon at the end of the year, the telco announced.

Effective Oct. 1, K. Guru Gowrappan, the former Alibaba Group exec who has served as ’s president and COO since April of this year, will step into the CEO role at Oath. He will report to CEO Hans Vestberg.

Armstrong will help “guide the Verizon subsidiary’s management transition” as a strategic adviser, the company said, reporting to Verizon chairman Lowell McAdam (who stepped down as CEO in August).

Word emerged last week that Armstrong was set to leave Oath, the division formed through the merger of AOL and Yahoo . Armstrong joined AOL in 2009 and was named Oath’s CEO in 2017, following the telco’s acquisition of Yahoo.

Along with Armstrong, two other Oath execs are set to depart, according to sources: CFO Vanessa Wittman, who joined the company in early 2018 after previously serving as chief financial officer at Dropbox, Motorola, and Marsh & McLennan; and chief communications officer Natalie Ravitz, who joined Oath in May from the NFL.

Since joining Verizon, Gowrappan has overseen the day-to-day operating businesses at Oath, including all of the consumer and customer brands, operations, products and technology.

In announcing the appointment, Vestberg said, “Guru has proven experience in scaling businesses globally. I’m thrilled he will lead Oath in an exciting new phase of growth, building on the foundation Tim and his team have created by delivering brands our customers love.”

Gowrappan previously served as Alibaba’s global managing director, focused on international expansion for consumer and enterprise products across e-commerce, entertainment and media, and payments. Prior to joining Alibaba in November 2015, he was COO at mobile startup Quixey and prior to that was the COO for growth/emerging initiatives at games company Zynga. He also held several leadership roles at Yahoo and Overture.