Home Depot elevates CIO from within as AI adoption plans progress

Dive Brief:

The Home Depot tapped Angie Brown to lead technology strategy, infrastructure, cybersecurity and software development Thursday. Brown was appointed as EVP and CIO after 27 years with the home improvement retailer, the company said.
Brown previously worked across virtually every aspect of the company’s IT operations, most recently managing technology for merchandising, customer experience, marketing, reliability engineering and supply chain functions as SVP of IT. “Her strategic vision and deep expertise have been instrumental in transforming Home Depot’s interconnected experience, making home improvement more modern, more seamless and more convenient,” Chair, President and CEO Ted Decker said in the announcement.
The appointment marks the departure of Fahim Siddiqui, who was elevated from SVP of IT to EVP and CIO shortly after Decker began his tenure as CEO in 2022. “Fahim has been instrumental in improving our infrastructure across our stores, supply chain facilities and support centers,” Decker said. “His leadership has been impactful in modernizing our technology foundation.”

Dive Insight:

Brown’s ascent coincides with a wave of tech-driven transformation across the retail industry, as top businesses deploy generative AI capabilities to enhance customer facing applications and assist employees.

Home Depot was quick to see the technology’s potential. The company leveraged machine learning and computer vision to build an in-store app called Sidekick that helps associates prioritize tasks, manage inventory and improve productivity after Siddiqui assumed the CIO role and his predecessor Matt Carey became EVP of customer experience. Carey retired last year and was succeeded by Jordan Broggi as EVP of customer experience and president of online.

Cloud helped build a foundation for Home Depot’s AI adoption. The company migrated its website to Google Cloud and then expanded the hyperscaler partnership last year to leverage Vertex AI model training and analytics capabilities.

By mid-2024, Home Depot was piloting more than 175 machine learning and generative AI use cases, Siddiqui said during last year’s MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. The company rolled out information-gathering generative AI tools for its staff earlier this year, company executives said during a recent earnings call.

While Home Depot was quick to explore the potential of generative AI tools, the company was also wary of the inherent risks. Drawing on the company’s experience in the cloud, Siddiqui advocated for a strong security posture around AI adoption, pointing to attack vectors opened by the technology in the absence of strong governance.

The company suffered a major data breach in 2014 that led to a multimillion-dollar customer settlement and was the victim of a third-party vendor error that exposed employee data last year.

Home Depot declined to provide details on the reason for Siddiqui’s departure or his future plans in an email.