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What distinguishes leaders of successful companies in the AI age? Such CEOs see technology as a growth engine and rethink their companies’ futures accordingly. Accenture has studied the advent of those leaders and surfaced five qualities that tech-driven CEOs share — from treating data as a strategic differentiator to becoming a tech talent magnet.
When the chief executive of a global retailer recently faced mounting pressure from online rivals, he chose an unconventional response. Instead of relying on the playbook that once powered the company’s growth, he immersed himself in emerging technologies. He sought advice from outside experts, hired executives with digital expertise, and built new technology partnerships.
That personal reinvention set the stage for a corporate one. The CEO transformed the retailer into a digital-first competitor by turning stores into logistics hubs for online orders, embedding data into customer interactions, and launching a technology-driven advertising platform.
The retail CEO’s experience reflects a larger shift in corporate leadership: the rise of CEOs who pair their business acumen with technological fluency to create strategic advantage. Whether companies will disrupt or get disrupted increasingly depends on whether their leaders can harness technology, especially in the age of AI. Today, only 5.9% of CEOs at the world’s 2,660 largest companies have ever worked in tech, and just 3.2% have held technical roles, according to our research.1 Even so, we increasingly see in our research and advisory work that experience isn’t destiny. More leaders are now cultivating the knowledge to make bold bets, build stakeholder conviction, and push their organizations into new arenas of growth.
This new class of tech-driven CEOs treats technology prowess as a core currency of strategic advantage. They don’t dabble with chatbots or dashboards on the side. They study how advanced systems that combine technologies ranging from AI agents to drones and robots can redefine industries. And rather than leaving those high-level strategy decisions to a CIO or CTO, they develop the expertise to steer technology-driven transformations themselves.
What makes this shift possible is not access to tools — those are everywhere. It’s mindset. Technologies are advancing fast and becoming more affordable, lowering the barriers for incumbents across industries. The companies that are pulling ahead are those whose CEOs see technology not as a cost center but as a growth engine and have the confidence to reimagine what their companies can become by applying it across customers, products, channels, and data.
We have closely examined the rise of such leaders. Drawing on thousands of client engagements and extensive research, we have identified five qualities that set technology-driven CEOs apart.
References
1. Accenture Research has tracked biographies for Global 3000 company executives since 2023. For this study, we analyzed a sample of 2,660 CEOs from Global 3000 companies to assess the prevalence of tech prowess in top leadership. We tested three distinct indicators: experience at a tech company, deep expertise in specific technology domains (such as AI or cloud computing), and hands-on experience in a technical role — even within non-tech companies. For each of the three indicators, we created a proprietary list of companies, technology keywords, and tech titles in consultation with senior research and consulting leaders.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Prashant P. Shukla, Emily Thornton, Joey Cofsky, Grace Campbell, and Gururaj Rao for their contributions to this article.
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