General Motors (GM) has appointed Mike Abbott, former vice president of Engineering for Apple’s Cloud Services division, as executive vice president, Software. Mr. Abbott will report to GM chair and CEO Mary Barra.

In his role with GM, Mr. Abbott will lead a new software organization focused on the development of vehicle and enterprise software technologies and solutions, as well as delivery of digital services and features to retail and commercial customers, says GM.

The software org will bring together a newly-created team and bring together three now distinct software functions within the company, including teams led by Scott Miller, vice president, Software Defined Vehicle and Operating System; Stacy Lynett, vice president, Information and Digital Technology; and Edward Kummer, chief digital officer, Digital Business.

As vice president of Apple’s Cloud Services team, Mr. Abbott led a team responsible for the development of core infrastructure for all of Apple’s cloud-based services including iCloud iMessage, Private Relay, Mail and account security. In addition to storage, networking and compute, his team created products for Apple’s Education and Enterprise categories.

Mr. Abbott also served as a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL). Previously, he served as general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). He has also led teams at Twitter, Palm and Microsoft.

Mr. Abbott has a B.S. in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo. 

[Image courtesy: GM]