Olumide Soroye’s journey to the CEO role at Everett, Wash.-based industrial giant Fortive began thousands of miles away — in Lagos, Nigeria, where he grew up as the youngest of six children.
“I grew up learning how to survive,” Soroye said. “There are five bigger humans around you that could really trample you if you’re not savvy.”
That savviness — combined with a Harvard MBA and two decades in consulting and data analytics — is guiding Fortive as it enters a new chapter.
Fortive on Monday completed the spinoff of its precision technologies segment into a new North Carolina company called Ralliant. The move carved out roughly a third of Fortive’s business and leaves behind a streamlined portfolio of 10 operating brands in healthcare and industrial safety and productivity.
“It leaves Fortive as an incredibly focused and more durable company,” said Soroye, who officially became CEO on June 28, succeeding founding chief executive Jim Lico.
Lico said last year that the spin-off would allow Fortive to concentrate more on recurring revenue and software-driven opportunities.
Founded in 2016 as a spinout from D.C.-based conglomerate Danaher, Fortive serves more than 100,000 customers globally and is one of the largest Washington state companies, with a market capitalization of more than $24 billion — higher than Expedia, F5, and Zillow Group.
With the spin-off of Ralliant complete, Fortive now operates two major business segments:
- Advanced Healthcare Solutions (e.g. low-temperature sterilization equipment, instrument tracking software)
- Intelligent Operating Solutions (e.g. Fluke test equipment, facility and asset management software)
Together, these segments generated about $4 billion, or 64%, of Fortive’s total revenue in 2024.
Soroye, who joined Fortive in 2021 and previously led both business segments, said AI is playing an important role. The company has had an “AI Center of Excellence” since 2017 — before the generative AI boom took hold — and is seeing gains across engineering, operations, and customer-facing products:
- Engineering productivity: Soroye said Fortive engineers are 20% more productive thanks to coding assistant tools. The company has doubled its new product funnel in three years without increasing R&D spending.
- Workforce enablement: Employees across Fortive’s 10,000-person workforce can access AI agents to guide process improvements using the Fortive Business System.
- Customer innovation: Fortive’s data-rich hardware — from hospital sterilizers to gas detectors — feeds millions of measurements into software platforms, enabling new analytics features and product upsells.
“Our focus on AI is using it as a companion to help a team of 10,000 feel like 100,000 — because we need to do more for the world,” Soroye said.
Before joining Fortive, Soroye studied engineering in Nigeria, became a CPA, earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and spent more than a decade at McKinsey before taking executive roles.
He brings a cross-disciplinary mindset to the CEO job — blending industrial rigor with digital fluency and global perspective. It uniquely suits Fortive’s hybrid business model that combines hardware, software, and data.
“I don’t know it all, but I can run it all,” Soroye said. “I can use the team around me and learn and figure it out.”
Soroye said it’s never been a more ambiguous and complex time to lead a business.
“You can chase every fad, but the ability to see through the fog and really know what matters, what drives business impact, and helping your team zero in and capture that — it’s never been more exciting,” he said.
Source: Geek Wire
