ActiveState names Abby Kearns as new Chief Executive

ActiveState has appointed open source executive Abby Kearns as Chief Executive Officer, marking a leadership change as it positions itself around managed open source and software supply chain security.

Stephen Baker, CEO since 2024, has joined ActiveState's Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Kearns has more than 25 years of experience in technology leadership. She has held Chief Technology Officer and product roles at AIembic and Puppet, which was acquired by Perforce. She also served as CEO of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, an open source organisation that worked with large enterprises on cloud and cloud-native adoption.

ActiveState sells services and software for sourcing and managing open source components used in commercial applications. It argues that unmanaged open source is an increasing business and security risk as development teams rely more heavily on third-party packages.

Focus on supply chain

In the announcement, ActiveState highlighted the prevalence of open source in corporate software, saying 96% of enterprise applications include open source software. It also argued that many organisations do not treat it as critical infrastructure.

It linked unmanaged open source use to security vulnerabilities, legal exposure, and software supply chain compromise. ActiveState positioned its offering as a central source of "secure and trusted open source" based on a library of "built-from-source and continually remediated" components.

ActiveState said it maintains a catalogue of more than 79 million open source components and container images, which customers can access through an artefact repository, CI/CD pipeline, integrated development environment, or directly from ActiveState.

It also said it continuously monitors and updates components, linking these processes to improved vulnerability management and developer productivity, though it did not provide independent validation.

Kearns tied the company's positioning to broader changes in software development workflows, including the impact of AI tools on code creation and dependency use. She also highlighted ActiveState's emphasis on building components from source.

"ActiveState has spent decades building the world's most trusted library of built-from-source components. As enterprises grapple with the security risks of unmanaged open source software - a challenge amplified by the surge in AI-accelerated development - our role as a 'one-stop shop' for this foundational infrastructure has never been more critical," said Abby Kearns, Chief Executive Officer, ActiveState.

"I am thrilled to lead this talented team as we help engineering and security teams move faster without compromising on security," Kearns added.

Leadership change

Baker described his tenure as a period of product and company building, focused on reducing known vulnerabilities and the manual work involved in managing open source dependencies.

"Leading ActiveState for the past two years has been an incredible journey of innovation. We have built a foundation that reduces CVEs by up to 99% and saves developers thousands of hours in manual toil. As I transition to the Board, I can't think of a better leader than Abby to steer our next phase of global growth. Her expertise in digital transformation and open source communities is exactly what our customers need as they scale," said Stephen Baker, Board Member, ActiveState.

The appointment adds another high-profile open source leader to the executive ranks of a company operating in a crowded segment that includes software composition analysis tools, artefact repositories, and managed dependency services. The wider market has drawn increased attention from boards and regulators as incidents involving third-party code and compromised build pipelines have become more visible.

ActiveState said the transition reflects its intention to scale in response to growing enterprise demand for more controlled ways to consume open source software in mission-critical applications.