Dolby Names Marc Whitten CEO as Kevin Yeaman Retires After 17 Years
Dolby Laboratories has hired Marc Whitten as its new president and chief executive, replacing Kevin Yeaman, who is retiring after 17 years in the role. Whitten will also join the company's board of directors. Yeaman will stay on in an advisory capacity to help with the handover.
The company said it selected Whitten as part of a "thoughtful, long-term succession process," according to its official announcement on the Dolby newsroom site and reported by Variety. Peter Gotcher, Dolby's board chairman, praised Whitten's "product vision, technological expertise and leadership" in a statement. David Dolby, a company director and son of founder Ray Dolby, also commented on the transition.
Whitten arrives with a résumé that stretches across some of the biggest names in consumer technology. Most recently he served as vice-president of robotics at Meta. Before that, he was CEO of Cruise, the autonomous-vehicle company; president of Unity Create, the division of the game-engine maker Unity; and chief product officer at Sonos, the home-audio brand.
His earlier career is equally deep in hardware and entertainment platforms. Whitten spent 17 years at Microsoft, where his roles included corporate vice-president and chief product officer of Xbox. He then moved to Amazon as vice-president of entertainment devices and services, helping build the Alexa, Kindle and Fire TV product families — three product lines that millions of people use to watch, read and listen at home.
For a company like Dolby, whose audio and visual technologies sit inside cinemas, living rooms and streaming services worldwide, that consumer-device experience is directly relevant. Dolby's formats — Dolby Atmos for sound and Dolby Vision for picture — are licensed to studios, hardware manufacturers and streaming platforms, so leadership that understands both the engineering and the end-user matters.
Yeaman's departure closes a long chapter. He joined Dolby in 2005 as chief financial officer and was named CEO in 2009, steering the company through the shift from cinema audio into the streaming era. Dolby's press release describes him as retiring after nearly two decades with the company.
The transition places Dolby's next phase in the hands of an executive who has built products at Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, and run companies in robotics and gaming software. Whether Whitten pushes Dolby deeper into new product categories or sharpens its existing licensing business will be the story to watch.
