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ATLANTA — Top CEOs are stepping down as AI reshapes corporate leadership. Top executives at Coca-Cola and Walmart said artificial intelligence played a key role in their decisions to step down, arguing that the next phase of transformation will require leaders better suited for an AI-driven era.
At Coca-Cola, CEO James Quincey said the company is entering a new phase of growth that calls for different leadership. Henrique Braun, the company’s chief operating officer, is set to take over at the end of March.
“My job is also to think who’s the best team to put on the field to get the next wave done,” Quincey said. “I concluded that … it was time to put someone else on the field for the next wave of growth.”
Quincey said Coca-Cola had made significant progress before the arrival of generative AI, but said the company now faces a broader transformation.
“In a pre-AI, a pre-gen-AI mode, we made a lot of progress,” Quincey said. “But now there’s a huge new shift coming along.”
He said Coca-Cola needs “someone with the energy to pursue a completely new transformation of the enterprise.”
Walmart’s Doug McMillon made a similar case. John Furner took over as CEO on Feb. 1 after McMillon said the scale of the company’s AI transition helped convince him it was time to leave.
“With what’s happening with AI, I could start this next big set of transformations … but I couldn’t finish,” McMillon said. “About a year ago, I really started feeling like this next run … caused me to think that now was the right time.”
McMillon said Walmart has already begun using AI in supply chain operations, customer-facing tools and efficiency initiatives across the business.
“They’re just going to keep scaling what we’ve already started … and then use AI to transform it all,” he said.
Taken together, the departures suggest AI is becoming more than a productivity tool or cost-cutting lever. For some of America’s biggest companies, it is emerging as a force that can reshape leadership itself.