Kris Whitney and the New Guard: Leadership Transition Atop IBM i and Power

Product roadmaps don't only leak through spec sheets and compiler patches. They leak through who a company puts in charge of the next chapter, and 2026 brought a genuinely significant change at the top of IBM i engineering.

The transition

Steve Will retired in 2026 after a 41-year IBM career, closing out his tenure as IBM i Chief Architect -- one of the platform's most visible and longest-serving technical leaders. He was succeeded by Kris Whitney, who previously served as the IBM i platform's chief engineer, giving Whitney direct operational continuity into the new role rather than an outside hire's learning curve.

The broader IBM i and Power leadership bench remains stable around that change: Bill Starke continues as Power Processor Chief Architect, the most consistent public source on Power's silicon direction; Jeff Scheel leads Linux for Power architecture; and Yan Zhuo, in the IBM i product management lead role since early 2025, is the bridge between platform engineering and what customers actually see on IBM's roadmap.

Why this is worth tracking, not just noting

A chief architect transition after four decades under one person is a real institutional event. It doesn't confirm any specific Power12 architectural detail, but new technical leadership at this level typically arrives at or just before meaningful platform direction-setting -- which makes Whitney's public statements over the next few years a genuinely useful thing to watch, independent of whatever IBM eventually announces about the hardware itself.