Interim Chief Executive Officer, LinkSquares

A contract lifecycle veteran who led CLM pioneer Exari through its acquisition by Coupa, Hewitt stepped in this March to lead the next phase of AI contract management for the more than 1,000 legal teams on LinkSquares. His assignment: turn one of legal tech’s best-known platforms into its next growth story.

Co-founder & CEO, SpotDraft

The Harvard Law-trained former Wall Street lawyer opened 2026 with Qualcomm Ventures joining SpotDraft’s extended Series B to build privacy-critical, on-device contract AI. More than 700 legal teams run on the platform he co-founded in 2017.

Founder & CEO, Everlaw

The Berkeley computer science PhD has built Everlaw into a litigation and investigations platform trusted by more than 1,000 customers, including 91 of the Am Law 200 and all 50 state attorneys general. In 2026 he is pairing that reach with new AI partnerships and a visible responsible-AI agenda for litigation.

Co-founder & CEO, Checkbox

Wong moved Checkbox from Sydney to New York and closed a $23M Series A in January to build what the company calls the AI front door for in-house legal. Enterprise customers already include SAP, PepsiCo and Hitachi.

Co-founder & CEO, LawVu

Kidd closed 2025 with a NZ$400M valuation, the acquisition of contract-drafting company ClauseBase and the launch of LawVu’s Lens AI contract analysis. Clients of his in-house legal workspace include Expedia, PwC and Estee Lauder.

Chief Executive Officer, Axiom

Under McVeigh, Axiom’s bench of AI-experienced lawyers passed 850 last year, up 325 percent in twelve months, alongside the launch of a fully digital legal talent marketplace. He is quietly proving the alternative legal services model has an AI era.

Co-Founder & CEO, Numeric

Gilbert raised a $51M Series B led by IVP in November to expand Numeric from AI close management into a full finance platform. His new cash management tool reports auto-match rates near triple the industry standard.

Chief Executive Officer, Trullion

The former CFO of Time Warner Cable and AOL took the helm of AI accounting platform Trullion in October and promptly reported its best quarter ever. The platform now counts more than 3,000 customers, with audit-firm clients tripling year over year.

President & CEO, Prophix

Ajmera launched what Prophix bills as the first suite of autonomous budgeting, reporting and modeling agents for finance, positioning the mid-market performance management vendor as the leader in autonomous finance.

CEO & Founder, Cube

A three-time CFO turned founder, Ross closed a fresh $20M raise in April and brought in former Workday product leadership to accelerate AI-native financial planning. Her spreadsheet-native approach meets finance teams where they actually work.

Chief Executive Officer, Sovos

Akeroyd, a veteran of Salesforce and Oracle, launched the Sovos Compliance Network in June to meet what the company describes as an unprecedented global wave of e-invoicing mandates. Tax compliance has rarely moved this fast, and neither has Sovos.

Co-Founder & CEO, FloQast

The CPA-turned-founder unveiled FloQast’s AI Agent Builder to help accounting teams close the talent gap with auditable AI, and was named to the LA Business Journal’s LA500 in June. Accounting transformation finally has a face accountants trust.

CEO and Co-founder, HiBob

Named among HR Executive’s Top 100 HR tech influencers for 2026, Zehavi has grown HiBob’s Bob platform into the mid-market challenger of record, serving more than 3,000 modern companies as HR enters its AI era.

CEO and Co-founder, Phenom

Bayireddi acquired agentic people-analytics startup Included AI in January, his company’s eighth acquisition, while launching industry-specific applied AI for talent. Phenom is quietly consolidating the AI talent-experience category from Philadelphia.

Chief Executive Officer, Culture Amp

Rawlinson took the chief executive seat in January after a year as CFOO in which Culture Amp reached cash-flow positivity and triple-digit growth in its AI Coach. She now leads the employee-experience category-definer into its next chapter.

Chief Executive Officer, Oyster

Named chief executive in January of the $1.2B-valuation B Corp global employment platform, Moussa carries a mandate to make Oyster AI-native while scaling global hiring into emerging markets.

Chief Executive Officer, bswift

Bloomberg unveiled the next generation of bswift’s Emma Intelligence, an AI engine that connects enrollment and claims data to automate benefits decisions. He is transforming a former CVS Health unit into a standalone benefits technology player.

Chief Executive Officer, Lattice

Franklin launched Workforce Intelligence and a suite of AI agents in June, the centerpiece of her refounding of Lattice for the AI era across nearly 5,000 customers. She has become one of the clearest voices for keeping people at the center of AI-era workforce decisions.

Co-Founder & CEO, Drata

Markowitz is pushing compliance and trust automation into full AI governance following Drata’s acquisition of SafeBase, making the case that trust is the growth engine of the AI economy.

CEO & Co-Founder, Huntress

The former Air Force hacker has built Huntress past $250M in annual recurring revenue on the strength of a $150M Series D, bringing enterprise-grade security to the mid-market companies attackers actually target.

CEO & Co-Founder, NinjaOne

Sferlazza’s automated endpoint management company saw its valuation climb from $5B to $12.3B in roughly a year, backed by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with its founders retaining majority control. Few operators at this scale have stayed this far under the radar.

CEO & Co-Founder, Relyance AI

Sharma is building at the exact intersection of privacy, legal and AI governance, and moved in November to help enterprises eliminate shadow AI. General counsel and privacy leaders are his platform’s home audience.

Chief Executive Officer, Osano

Jaffari, who built Freshworks’ North America business through its IPO, took over data-privacy platform Osano in July 2025. His mandate: scale the most GC-native privacy program management tool in the market.

CEO & Co-Founder, BigID

Sirota relaunched his platform as BigID Next, spanning data security, privacy, compliance and AI risk posture, then added a conversational AI interface this spring. A decade in, he is repositioning a privacy pioneer as an AI governance platform.

Co-Founder & CEO, Altana

Smith partnered with Maersk in April to create a first-of-its-kind global digital trade network. His AI map of the world’s supply chains has become essential infrastructure for tariff, sanctions and forced-labor risk.

Chief Executive Officer, Exiger

Daniels paired Exiger with Palantir in support of U.S. Army acquisition, following a $919M government-wide supply chain risk award and a 2026 Wash100 recognition. Corporate compliance teams are discovering what defense already knows.

Chief Executive Officer, Resilinc

The former Eightfold president took over the original supply-chain risk-mapping company in early 2025 and shipped agentic AI with tariff-analysis and forced-labor-compliance agents within months. New leadership, new speed.

Founder & CEO, Overhaul

The Irish former special forces operator closed a $105M Series C as his in-transit risk platform, protecting some $1.4T of cargo with six of the top ten automakers, meets an era of record cargo theft.

Founder & CEO, Keelvar

The former AI lecturer’s sourcing optimization company was the only vendor named in both advanced sourcing optimization and autonomous sourcing in Gartner’s 2026 Market Guide. Cork, Ireland is quietly home to procurement’s most interesting AI story.

Co-Founder & CEO, Fairmarkit

Frechette launched Total Agentic Sourcing in April with early adopters including Boeing, following a fifth straight ProcureTech100 recognition. Tariff-era cost pressure is pushing procurement exactly where he has been building.

Chief Executive Officer, Clari + Salesloft

Cox was named chief executive at the December close of the Clari and Salesloft merger, uniting two revenue platforms serving more than 5,000 organizations into what the company calls the first predictive revenue system.

Co-Founder & CEO, Spekit

The Forbes 30 Under 30 alum published Just-in-Time, her book on the future of enablement in a world of AI, and is positioning Spekit as the independent alternative as the enablement category consolidates around her.

Co-Founder & CEO, Mindtickle

Depura launched ElevateOS in April, billed as the first agentic operating system for revenue enablement, with customers including Cisco, Thomson Reuters and Johnson & Johnson. A unicorn-scale founder story still largely untold in the U.S.

Co-Founder & Managing Partner, BarkerGilmore

Gilmore’s annual In-House Counsel Compensation Report has become the reference source on legal-executive pay, and his firm the quiet constant behind general counsel hiring and succession at America’s leading companies.

Co-Founder & CEO, True Search

Stadler took strategic investment from Integrum Holdings in November, adding Ursula Burns to his board, as True reports the fastest growth among the industry’s ten largest search firms.

Chief Executive Officer, Bespoke Partners

Walczykowski launched an AI platform in December that his firm says cuts executive search time by 30 percent for private equity-backed software companies, capping a year of record growth.