Alphabet appoints Eli Lilly’s Anat Ashkenazi as new CFO

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has announced the appointment of Anat Ashkenazi, formerly the CFO of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, as its new chief financial officer.

Ashkenazi will assume her new role on July 31, 2024, following her 23-year tenure at Eli Lilly, where she became CFO in 2021.

According to an SEC filing, Ashkenazi will join Alphabet after completing her duties at Eli Lilly. The pharmaceutical company confirmed her resignation, noting that she will remain in her current role until the end of July before transitioning to her new position outside the pharmaceutical industry.

Alphabet’s current CFO, Ruth Porat, announced her departure last July but has continued in the role until a replacement was found. Porat, who joined Alphabet from Morgan Stanley in 2015, will officially step down once Ashkenazi takes over.

Ashkenazi’s move to Alphabet is significant but not unprecedented, given Eli Lilly’s stature as an $800 billion company. Additionally, Alphabet has existing connections to the healthcare and life sciences sectors through subsidiaries like Verily and Calico. Earlier this year, Alphabet’s AI-enabled drug-discovery company, Isomorphic Labs, founded by DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, signed a strategic deal with Eli Lilly to apply AI to drug research and development.

Based in the Bay Area, Ashkenazi will report directly to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “We’re very pleased to have found such a strong CFO, with a track record of strategic focus on long-term investment to fuel innovation and growth,” said Pichai. “The AI era is giving us an incredible opportunity to innovate at scale across our core products and to create entirely new products and experiences for our users and customers. I look forward to working with Anat as we invest responsibly to support our next wave of growth.”