Five9 has appointed Amit Mathradas to succeed Mike Burkland as its CEO, effective February 2, 2026, signaling a strategic shift toward AI-driven customer experience innovation.
Burkland, who has faced ongoing health challenges, said stepping down as CEO will allow him to focus on his well-being while continuing to support the company in his position on the board as Executive Chairman.
Under Burkland’s leadership, Five9 has grown from a $10MN startup to a CCaaS leader with more than $1BN in annual revenue, competing with the likes of AWS, Genesys, and NiCE.
Mathradas brings a strong track record in AI product development and scaling global operations, which will be key as the company navigates the shift towards enterprise platforms with built-in intelligence to boost efficiency and transform customer engagement.
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Amit Mathradas[/caption]
Most recently, Mathradas was CEO of Nintex, building out its AI‑driven business orchestration platform for over 7,000 organizations across 90 countries. Before that, he served as President and COO at Avalara, helping the tax compliance automation firm grow by more than 250% before its $8.4BN sale to Vista Equity Partners.
In announcing the move, Burkland highlighted the importance of Mathradas’ AI experience in leading the company:
“His deep expertise in product innovation, AI, and operational excellence at scale makes him ideally suited to lead the Company into its next chapter. As we advance our AI-driven CX strategy, we believe Amit will help lead Five9 to even greater success by furthering our efforts to accelerate growth and deliver meaningful value for our customers, partners, employees, and shareholders.”
“He will lead our efforts to capture greater share in an expanding market, where Five9 is uniquely positioned to win as enterprises increasingly seek unified CX platforms with natively embedded AI,” Burkland added.
During Five9’s second quarter earnings call, Burkland had said that in its search for his successor, the company was prioritizing a track record of AI-led innovation, experience running large-scale operations, and a growth mindset focused on pushing the business well beyond $2BN in revenue over time.
“It’s going to be much more AI and innovation focused as opposed to comms,” Burkland said at the time.