Editorial Team
A roundup of AI and digital leadership appointments announced by industrial companies in September 2026, from public sources. Vendors and professional-services firms are excluded.
Semiconductor materials
- Entegris appointed Nathaniel Arnold Chief Information and Digital Officer. He joins from GE Aerospace, where he was CIO for engineering and future of flight, supporting more than 10,000 engineers (source).
Assurance and inspection
- DNV promoted Rob van der Spek to AI and Innovation Manager for Industrial Services, with a brief covering digital inspection and managed assurance (source).
Adjacent, and worth noting
Mayo Clinic recruited its new technology leader out of Honeywell Aerospace and Defense, where the incoming executive had directed digital strategy and scaled the company's AI capabilities as CIO, and earlier ran global manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson (source). The destination is a hospital, but the talent pipeline runs out of industry.
The pattern so far
Two observations from the six industrial appointments we have covered this year:
- Aerospace is a net exporter of digital leadership. GE Aerospace and Honeywell Aerospace have each both hired an AI chief and lost one this year.
- The title pairs AI with data. Chief AI and Data Officer, Chief Data & AI Officer, Chief Information and Digital Officer: the roles being created assume that whoever owns the models also owns the pipelines feeding them.
See the full list of who runs AI at industrial companies. To report a move, write to tips@industrialai.news.
Get the next one in your inbox
Every appointment, deployment and move in industrial AI. One email a week, free.
