Planview Taps Matt Zilli as CEO to Drive AI-Powered Growth

AUSTIN, TX – January 07, 2026 – Planview, a prominent player in Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) and Digital Product Development (DPD), has appointed Matt Zilli as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. The move signals a clear intent to accelerate the company's already aggressive growth trajectory, leveraging Zilli's extensive experience in scaling enterprise software businesses.

Zilli, who most recently served as Planview's President of Field Operations, takes the helm from Razat Gaurav. In a move described by the company as a “long-standing succession plan,” Gaurav will transition to a role on Planview’s Board of Directors, ensuring leadership continuity. The transition comes as the Austin-based company doubles down on its 'AI-first' strategy, aiming to further solidify its leadership in helping large organizations connect high-level strategy with day-to-day execution.

A Proven Scaler Takes the Helm

Matt Zilli is no stranger to hyper-growth environments. His career is marked by pivotal roles in some of the enterprise software sector's most notable success stories. Before joining Planview, he was instrumental in scaling Marketo from a mid-sized operation with $60 million in revenue to an industry titan, culminating in its landmark $4.75 billion acquisition by Adobe in 2018. During his tenure, he held key leadership positions, including Chief Customer Officer at Marketo and later Vice President of Sales at Adobe, where he managed new and expansion bookings, customer retention, and supporting operations.

His path to Planview's top job came via acquisition. Zilli was the CEO of Clarizen, a collaborative work management software firm, when Planview acquired it in February 2021. At Clarizen, he orchestrated a significant go-to-market transformation and product evolution that set the stage for accelerated growth. This deep, hands-on experience within the work management ecosystem, combined with his recent leadership of Planview's entire global sales organization, gives him a unique and comprehensive understanding of the company's operations, customers, and strategic imperatives.

“Planview’s AI-first platform sits at the heart of how companies transform, at a time when every company faces unprecedented disruption,” Zilli said in a statement. “Our customers navigate change successfully when they connect strategy to execution every day, and our AI-first platform is accelerating their time to market and driving efficiency across their most strategic priorities. I’m honored to lead this exceptional team as we continue to innovate and deliver differentiated value for our customers around the world.”

Building on a Foundation of Growth and Acquisition

Zilli inherits a company on a formidable upward trajectory. Under Razat Gaurav's leadership over the past four and a half years, Planview has cemented its market position through strategic expansion and a disciplined acquisition strategy. The company has successfully doubled its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), surpassing the $400 million mark in fiscal year 2023, and grown its global team to over 1,500 employees.

Gaurav, who also came to Planview with a track record of scaling businesses like LLamasoft, oversaw a period of intense activity. Key acquisitions, including Clarizen and Changepoint in 2021 and Tasktop in 2022, were integrated to create a more comprehensive end-to-end platform. This M&A strategy advanced Planview's vision for 'Connected Work,' a framework for unifying disparate teams, methodologies, and data streams across an enterprise. Gaurav also spearheaded global expansion, establishing a significant presence in APAC and India.

The company's board and investors, TPG Capital and TA Associates, who acquired Planview for $1.6 billion in 2020, voiced strong support for the planned transition. “Matt is a seasoned executive who will bring his strategic leadership, operating experience, and deep industry expertise to bear for Planview,” said Nehal Raj, Managing Partner of TPG Capital, and Ashu Agrawal, Managing Director at TA Associates, in a joint statement. “We thank Razat for his leadership in successfully scaling the business over the last several years, and look forward to him continuing to contribute as a Planview Board member.”

Mark Fields, Chairman of the Board, added, “I appreciate the leadership provided by Razat during the last four and a half years in helping create a differentiated vision around Connected Work and delivering on it with a next-generation platform.”

The AI-First Imperative: Anvi and Connected Work

Central to Planview's future, and Zilli's mandate, is the company's AI-first platform. The recent introduction of Planview® Anvi, a next-generation enterprise AI solution, represents the technological cornerstone of this strategy. Anvi is designed to move beyond generic AI capabilities by leveraging Planview's deep domain expertise in portfolio and work management.

Unlike general-purpose AI tools, Anvi is powered by a unified data fabric that connects to over 60 different systems of record, from ERPs and CRMs to DevOps tools. This allows it to build a comprehensive, contextual understanding of an organization's work patterns, dependencies, and strategic objectives. Its capabilities include real-time risk detection, forecasting project completion, and automating routine tasks. Users can interact with it via conversational chat for expert guidance or deploy custom AI agents to autonomously monitor workflows and preemptively solve problems.

Planview emphasizes that its AI is built with enterprise-grade security and governance, ensuring that customer data is not used to train generative AI models. This focus on contextual intelligence and security is critical for addressing the core challenge its platform targets: bridging the often-vast gap between a company's strategic intent and its operational delivery.

Navigating a Competitive Landscape

Zilli's appointment comes as Planview navigates an increasingly competitive and sophisticated market. The company is consistently recognized by industry analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester as a leader in Strategic Portfolio Management. However, it faces competition from a range of players, including broad platform providers like ServiceNow and Broadcom, as well as agile-focused tools from companies like Atlassian.

Planview's key differentiator remains its focus on providing a true end-to-end platform for large, complex enterprises that require robust governance and structured processes to manage multi-billion dollar portfolios. The combination of Zilli’s proven go-to-market prowess and the company’s advanced, purpose-built AI platform is a clear strategic maneuver to sharpen this competitive edge.

The backing of private equity giants TPG Capital and TA Associates provides the financial muscle to continue investing in innovation and potential future acquisitions. This leadership change appears to be a calculated move to install an executive with a specific skill set—scaling customer-facing operations and integrating acquired technologies—to execute the next phase of the investors' growth thesis. With a solid foundation, a clear AI-driven vision, and a new leader specialized in execution, Planview is positioning itself not just to participate in the future of connected work, but to actively define it.