Coca-Cola CEO Says He Stepped Down Due to Demands of AI Transformation

The upcoming changes driven by artificial intelligence (AI) played a role in the decision of Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey to step down from his role, Quincey told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday (March 26).

“My job is also to think who’s the best team to put on the field to get the next wave done,” Quincey said, per a Thursday CNBC report. “And I concluded that, actually, it was time to put someone else on the field for the next wave of growth.”

Quincey told CNBC that he and Coca-Cola made a lot of progress before the rise of AI and generative AI but “now there’s a huge new shift coming along.” He added that he is leaning into technological advances but believes that the company needs “someone with the energy to pursue a completely new transformation of the enterprise.”

Quincey is set to step down as CEO on Tuesday (March 31). Coca-Cola announced his plans in a December 2025 press release, saying Quincey would be succeeded as CEO by Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Henrique Braun.

The company said in the release that Quincey became CEO in 2017, reshaped the company’s strategy and operating model to include a focus on digital transformation, and added more than 10 additional billion-dollar brands.

CNBC reported that former Walmart CEO Douglas McMillon told “Squawk Box” in December 2025, before he left his role as CEO, that AI played a role in his decision to hand that role over to someone else.

“About a year ago, I really started feeling like this next run, you could see what agentic commerce was going to look like, the vision for AI shopping, and I started thinking about everything that needs to happen over the next few years, and it really caused me to think that now was the right time [to step down],” McMillon said, per the report.

It was reported in September 2025 that McMillon said at a workforce conference at Walmart’s headquarters in Arkansas: “Maybe there’s a job in the world that AI won’t change, but I haven’t thought of it.”

McMillon was succeeded as CEO on Feb. 1 by John Furner. PYMNTS reported at the time that while Furner is not an obvious “tech CEO” in the Silicon Valley sense, he could prove to be a right-fit “tech CEO” in the Walmart sense.

For all PYMNTS B2B coverage, subscribe to the daily B2B Newsletter.