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Kaz Nejatian, the former COO at Shopify, is replacing ex-CEO Carrie Wheeler, who resigned from her position on Aug. 15.
Opendoor has appointed Kaz Nejatian to serve as its new CEO. The iBuyer made its announcement less than one month after former CEO Carrie Wheeler resigned following a pressure campaign by activist investors.
Nejatian is “the right leader for the AI era,” the company said.
Along with Nejatian’s appointment, the company announced that its co-founders are returning to Opendoor as board members.
Who is Opendoor’s new CEO? Nejatian has worked as a lawyer, entrepreneur and product leader. He was most recently the chief operating officer and vice president of product at Shopify, and was previously founder and CEO of the payment technology company Kash, according to a Sept. 10 press release.
In addition to taking on the CEO role at Opendoor, Nejatian will join the company’s board of directors.
Nejatian said it is “a privilege” to step into his new role at Opendoor and highlighted the opportunities he sees for the future through the company’s embrace of AI.
“Few life events are as important as buying or selling a home,” he said in the release. “With AI, we have the tools to make that experience radically simpler, faster, and more certain. That’s the future we’re building.”
How we got here: Nejatian replaces Wheeler, who resigned from her position on Aug. 15. In the weeks preceding her resignation, activist investors drove up Opendoor’s stock price, ultimately helping the company avoid being delisted from Nasdaq.
Though Opendoor in early August reported its first quarter of adjusted EBITDA profitability since 2022, some investors questioned Wheeler’s leadership and called for her to step down.
In an Aug. 15 LinkedIn post reflecting on her time at Opendoor, Wheeler said she was “proud of the transformation we’ve driven together” in the years since she accepted the CEO role in late 2022 — a time when the company “was in crisis.” A month earlier, Opendoor had laid off 18% of its staff.
“I believe the best thing I can do for Opendoor now is to accelerate my succession plans that I shared with the Board mid-year and make room for new leadership to take the reins,” she wrote.
Following her exit, Chief Technology & Product Officer Shrisha Radhakrishna was named Opendoor’s president and interim leader while the company sought a new permanent CEO.
Co-founders return: In addition to a new CEO, Opendoor has welcomed back co-founders Keith Rabois and Eric Wu to the board of directors. The board’s lead independent director, Eric Feder, said the pair “will inject the ‘founder DNA’ and energy at a pivotal moment for Opendoor.”
Wu, who co-founded Opendoor in 2013, left the company in Dec. 2023 after stepping down from the CEO role a year earlier.
Rabois said there was “only one choice” to fill the CEO role, calling Nejatian “a decisive leader who has driven product innovation at scale, ruthlessly reduced G&A expenses to drive profitability and deeply understands the potential for AI to radically reshape a company’s entire operations.”
“He is the right leader to unlock Opendoor’s unique data and assets as we build on Opendoor’s original mission, now enhanced as an AI-first company,” Rabois added.
