Darktrace chief Poppy Gustafsson to step down ahead of takeover

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Poppy Gustafsson is stepping down as chief executive of UK cyber security company Darktrace ahead of the completion of its acquisition by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo.

Chief operating officer Jill Popelka will take over the top job and rejoins the FTSE 100 company’s board on Friday, Darktrace said. The company announced in April that Thoma Bravo had agreed to take the group private in a transaction valuing it at £4.3bn.

“With the acquisition of Darktrace by Thoma Bravo nearing its completion and with us having identified an excellent successor in Jill, now is the right time to hand over the reins so Jill can lead Darktrace through its transition into private ownership and beyond,” Gustafsson said.

Popelka previously held senior leadership roles at technology businesses including Snap and SAP SuccessFactors and started her career at consulting firm Accenture. Popelka, who has been based in the US, will split her time between the UK — where Darktrace has its headquarters — and the US.

Darktrace expects the deal to receive its final foreign regulatory approval this month after which it will seek the UK court’s sanction of the transaction, with closing anticipated shortly afterwards.

Gustafsson, who will become a non-executive director after completion, said Darktrace had “been a huge part of my life and my identity for over a decade” and the challenge had “required tremendous personal and professional commitment”.

Cambridge-based Darktrace was founded in 2013 and provides artificial intelligence-based cyber security services. It listed in London in 2021 and has had a turbulent history on the public markets.

New York-based Quintessential Capital Management in 2023 published a report alleging Darktrace appeared to have simulated or anticipated sales to “phantom” customers through a “network of willing resellers”.

The short seller’s report also alleged the company seemed to have incorrectly booked sales of hardware as software and may have misrepresented the nature of its revenue. Darktrace rebutted the claims.

The company has also struggled to disentangle itself from ties with Mike Lynch and Autonomy, the UK software group he founded, before Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges in June in one of Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud cases. He was among seven people to die in August after the superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily.

Gustafsson previously worked as Autonomy’s corporate controller and helped set up Darktrace using funds in part from Lynch’s Invoke Capital.

New chief executive Popelka said the company’s potential was “enormous” and its technology had “never been more critical to organisations around the world and our AI-native capabilities position us at the forefront of the ever-changing cyber security market”.

She first joined Darktrace’s board in January as a non-executive director before becoming chief operating officer in June, at the time stepping down from her board seat.

Andrew Almeida, partner at Thoma Bravo, said the private equity group was “fully supportive of Poppy and the Board’s succession plan”.