Ashraf Alkarmi Named Dropbox Co-CEO

Dropbox has announced a major shift in its corporate leadership. Andrew “Drew” Houston, the company’s co-founder who has served as CEO for nearly two decades, is stepping down from the top role, as revealed by Houston himself on LinkedIn.

Moreover, the company has initiated a dual-leadership model to manage the change, appointing company insider Ashraf Alkarmi as Co-CEO alongside Houston effective immediately.

Following a structured transition period, Houston will step away from daily executive management to become the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. At that point, Alkarmi will take full control as the sole CEO of the cloud computing giant.

The corporate shakeup comes at a time of stable business operations. Alongside the executive announcement, Dropbox management confirmed that its projected financial performance remains strong, with expected revenue for the second quarter and full fiscal year tracking in-line with or ahead of previous market guidance.

Houston shared the news directly with employees, expressing immense confidence in his successor. “Ashraf has done an incredible job transforming our core business, and I can’t think of a better leader for Dropbox’s next chapter,” Houston wrote in an internal message.

Alkarmi joined Dropbox in late 2024 as the General Manager and Senior Vice President of Core Products, a role that put him in charge of file sharing, the electronic signature tool Sign, and the document platform DocSend. He brings extensive industry background to the executive role, having previously worked as Chief Product Officer at Vimeo, and holding major product management roles at both Amazon and Meta Platforms.

A significant driver behind the leadership change is the company’s aggressive pivot toward AI features. Houston pointed out that Alkarmi has been leading product prototyping from the front lines, pushing the company to rethink how its storage architecture operates in an automated world.

The leadership restructuring also includes the hiring of Michael Torres as the company’s new Chief Product Officer, effective July 7. Torres joins Dropbox directly from Google, where he managed the product direction for the Chrome browser.