Qlik's Capone departs after eight years as CEO

BREAKING -- Mike Capone is stepping down from his role as CEO of Qlik.

The move comes just over two weeks after Qlik held its annual user conference in Kissimmee, Fla., where it unveiled new features collectively aimed at helping customers deploy the vendor's AI tools to generate insights as well as develop, deploy and manage agents and other AI applications of their own.

Mike Capone

"After more than eight years as CEO of Qlik, I've made the difficult decision that now is the right time for me to step down from the role," Capone posted on LinkedIn. "Leading Qlik has been a true privilege. I've been fortunate to work alongside friends and colleagues who care deeply, customers who pushed us to be better, and partners who have helped take Qlik further than we could have alone."

Based in King of Prussia, Penn., Qlik is a longtime analytics vendor that under Capone's leadership evolved into a more full-featured data platform provider featuring data integration and AI capabilities.

Qlik did not respond to questions regarding a succession plan by the time this story was posted. The vendor's only statement on Capone's decision to resign his position as CEO was posted on X.

"Thank you, Mike, for your vision, commitment and impact," it said.

Capone was appointed Qlik's CEO in January 2018 after serving three years as chief operating officer at Medidata Solutions.

His resignation comes at a time when the data management and analytics industries are evolving. Capone joined Qlik during an era when self-service analytics fueled by robust data visualizations represented the cutting edge of business intelligence (BI).

After more than eight years as CEO of Qlik, I've made the difficult decision that now is the right time for me to step down from the role.

Qlik was viewed as one of the leading BI vendors, but was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2016 for $3 billion and taken private so the vendor could transform for the cloud away from the scrutiny of the public market. Qlik launched Qlik Sense Cloud Business in 2016, which was replaced in 2018 by Qlik Sense Business, a fully managed SaaS version of the vendor's enterprise analytics platform deployed on Qlik's own cloud.

By January 2022, after a 5-year process to reorganize and expand by adding data integration capabilities through a series of acquisitions, Qlik filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public stock offering and a return to the public markets. However, economic uncertainty delayed Qlik's plans, and then OpenAI's November 2022 launch of ChatGPT sparked a seismic change for all data management and analytics vendors.

Suddenly, with customers turning their attention to AI development rather than traditional BI tools such as reports and dashboards, data management and analytics providers had to become enablers of AI rather than analytics.

Qlik evolved to meet the needs of its customers, making AI its focal point over the past few years. Going forward, as Qlik continues to progress, it will do so under the leadership of a new CEO.

"As AI and agentic technologies reshape the world, the organizations that seize this opportunity will be those that can turn trusted data into meaningful action," Capone wrote on LinkedIn. "I am confident that Qlik is strongly positioned to help customers do exactly that."

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget and a journalist with more than three decades of experience. He covers analytics and data management.