Eric Schmidt Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm Tech Alphabet has announced that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and ex-Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene will not seek re-elections to its board after the expiration of their current tenures on the 19th of June 2019. This entails Schmidt and Greene are stepping down after 18 years and 7 years on the company's board respectively. Schmidt who ran Google from July 2001 to April 2011 will continue as technical advisor to Alphabet. Alphabet made this announcement while also announcing a new board member, Robin Washington, who notably serves as CFO of Gilead Sciences and is also a board member at Salesforce. She previously served in a number of executive positions at PeopleSoft and as CFO of enterprise software company Hyperion Solutions. Diane Greene Photograph by Kevin Moloney / Fortune Brainstorm Tech Greene stepped down as CEO of Google Cloud January this year to be replaced by ex-Oracle executive Thomas Kurian
A very big new acquisition has happened in the tech industry, with Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA), the publicly-traded cloud identity and access management software provider, announcing an agreement to buy Auth0, a fellow cloud identity software provider, for a price of $6.5 billion to be paid all with shares. A $6.5 billion exit for Auth0 marks a major win for the startup scene in Seattle, the tech hub where Auth0 is based and also a major win for the company's backers and investors. Auth0 last raised venture funding last year in July with a $120 million Series F round that valued the company at $1.9 billion. Now, it's about to sell for more than triple that amount. Auth0 has raised more than $330 million in total venture funding, with investors including the likes of Salesforce Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Telstra Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and DTCP. Salesforce Ventures led Auth0's most recent $120 million Series F round. With its acquisition of a fellow cloud identity a