Question 1

True or false: Arvind Krishna holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois.

Accepted Answer

True. Krishna earned his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1991.

Question 2

True or false: Arvind Krishna was the first Indian-born CEO of a major US technology company.

Accepted Answer

False. Sundar Pichai (born in India) became CEO of Google in 2015, and Shantanu Narayen (born in India) became CEO of Adobe in 2007, both predating Krishna's IBM CEO appointment in 2020.

Question 3

True or false: Arvind Krishna's father was a famous Bollywood film director.

Accepted Answer

False. Krishna’s father served in the Indian Army, not Bollywood. His family background is in engineering and public service.

Question 4

True or false: Arvind Krishna oversaw IBM’s record-breaking acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion.

Accepted Answer

True. As IBM's head of Cloud and Cognitive Software, he led the 2019 acquisition of Red Hat, the largest in IBM's history.

Question 5

True or false: Arvind Krishna’s first job was as a software engineer at Microsoft.

Accepted Answer

False. He joined IBM right after his PhD in 1990 and spent his entire career there before becoming CEO.

Question 6

True or false: Arvind Krishna grew up speaking only Hindi until college.

Accepted Answer

False. He was born in Andhra Pradesh, India, and grew up speaking Telugu at home; he became fluent in English during his education.

Question 7

True or false: Arvind Krishna once played the lead guitar in a college rock band.

Accepted Answer

True. At IIT Kanpur, Krishna played lead guitar in a band called 'The 4 Skins,' surprising for a future IBM CEO.

Question 8

True or false: Arvind Krishna famously banned the use of artificial intelligence within IBM products.

Accepted Answer

False. Krishna is a strong advocate for AI; under him, IBM launched Watsonx, investing heavily in generative AI and hybrid cloud.

Arvind Krishna Trivia Questions