Darktrace chief Poppy Gustafsson steps down

The co-founder and chief executive of Darktrace has stepped down from the British cybersecurity specialist ahead of its £4.3 billion takeover by a US private equity firm.

Poppy Gustafsson, who has led the company since 2016, left with immediate effect on Friday morning, ahead of the completion of the takeover by Thoma Bravo. She will be succeeded by Jill Popelka, Darktrace’s current chief operating officer.

Popelka joined the firm earlier this year following senior leadership roles at businesses including Accenture, Snap and SAP SuccessFactors.

The takeover is expected to complete this year, with the company hoping to clear its final European regulatory hurdle at the end of this month.

Gustafsson said: “Darktrace has been a huge part of my life and my identity for over a decade and I am immensely proud of everything we have achieved in that time. This challenge has required tremendous personal and professional commitment from me.

“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.”

Gustafsson, 42, holds a 0.59 per cent stake in Darktrace, which is valued at around £25 million. She will be appointed as a non-executive director once the takeover is complete.

Gustafsson was part of the team of mathematicians and intelligence experts who founded Darktrace in 2013 and brought its AI-powered cybersecurity solutions to market. Mike Lynch, the British technology entrepreneur who died when his superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily last month, was one of the early backers.

Gustafsson was regarded as Lynch’s protégé, having worked in the finance department of Autonomy, the technology company he founded and sold to Hewlett Packard for $11 billion in 2011. Lynch, who was accused of fraud and conspiracy for allegedly scheming to inflate the value of the company ahead of the sale, was acquitted of all 15 charges by a San Francisco jury in June.

Darktrace is one of the UK’s leading technology businesses: it went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 and is currently in the FTSE 100.

When it agreed to be taken private by Thoma Bravo in April, the deal was seen as a further blow to the London stock market. Critics regarded it as fresh evidence of a failure by investors to properly value its technology companies.

Popelka said: “Poppy and the team have built something very special. The potential of Darktrace is enormous — our technology has never been more critical to organisations around the world and our AI-native capabilities position us at the forefront of the ever-changing cybersecurity market.”

Thoma Bravo, a Chicago-based buy-out firm that specialises in technology investing, bid at $7.75 a share (620p), a 20 per cent premium to its undisturbed value. The shares closed largely flat at 583¼p.

Andrew Almeida, partner at Thoma Bravo, said: “We are fully supportive of Poppy and the board’s succession plan. Jill is the perfect leader to build on Poppy’s tremendous legacy at Darktrace as it embarks on this next phase of its life.”

The passionate advocate for British technlogy

Poppy Gustafsson’s resignation as the chief executive of Darktrace marks the end of an eight-year tenure as head of one of Britain’s biggest technology companies (Lauren Almeida writes).

Gustafsson, 42, who grew up in Cambridgeshire, where her father ran an agricultural sales business and her mother was a journalist for Farmers Weekly, went on to study maths at the University of Sheffield.

She qualified as an accountant at Deloitte, before working at Amadeus, a venture capital firm. Yet it was her third job that changed the course of her career, joining Autonomy — the company founded and later sold to Hewlett-Packard by Mike Lynch — as its corporate controller in 2009.

Lynch, the entrepreneur who died when his superyacht sank last month, and several other former Autonomy bosses founded Invoke Capital in 2012. Darktrace was formed the following year, with Invoke providing much of its seed funding. The company brought in ex-Autonomy staff into some of its top positions, including Gustafsson as chief financial officer. She became its chief executive in 2020.

Gustafsson, who was appointed an OBE in 2019, guided the company through its London listing in 2021 and its £4.3 billion take-private deal with Thoma Bravo, the American private equity firm, this year. Darktrace had a volatile life on the stock market, with some questioning its links to Lynch and the $11 billion sale of Autonomy.

While Gustafsson has said she will stay on as a non-executive director, she suggested that her stint as chief executive had taken a personal toll. She wrote on LinkedIn that it was the “best job in the world”, but that her resignation was due to a “culmination of the effort and personal commitment” she had “poured into this business over the last 11 years”.

She has been an ardent advocate for Britain’s technology sector. She wrote in The Times this year that the FTSE 100 index was under-represented areas such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

“While it was a Brit who invented the world wide web, the world-leading companies of the internet age were built in Silicon Valley,” she said. “Britain can be a leader in this revolution if we are willing to believe, and better invest, in ourselves.”

Gustafsson, a mother of two, has also been a strong advocate for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.