New Executive Appointments Reflect Five9's Commitment to AI-Driven Innovation, Disciplined Go-to-Market Execution, and Strategic Transformation

SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun. 29, 2026-- Five9, Inc. (NASDAQ: FIVN) (“Five9” or the “Company”), provider of the Intelligent CX Platform, today announced the appointments of Niranjan Vijayaragavan as Five9's new Chief Technology Officer, Rob Hornish as its new Chief Sales Officer, and Sven Linsmaier as Executive Vice President, Transformation and Strategy, effective June 29, 2026.

These executive team updates come as Five9 continues to scale its AI-driven CX strategy and sharpen execution across the business. As customer and partner needs evolve, these leadership additions reflect Five9’s continued investment in the infrastructure to move faster, strengthen alignment, and deliver value to customers, partners, employees, and shareholders.

“Niranjan, Rob, and Sven bring the kind of proven leadership and operational discipline that are critical as Five9 enters this next chapter,” said Amit Mathradas, CEO of Five9. “Niranjan’s deep expertise across product, technology and AI, Rob’s track record leading high-performing sales organizations, and Sven's proven ability to drive strategic transformation and scale operations will help us build on our momentum, deepen customer and partner impact, and execute with clarity across the business.”

Niranjan Vijayaragavan brings more than two decades of experience building products, platforms and technology organizations at global scale, most recently as Chief Product and Technology Officer at Nintex, where he led the company's transformation toward AI-driven enterprise automation. As Chief Technology Officer at Five9, Niranjan will lead Product Engineering, Product Management, AI Automation and Architecture under a single leadership structure to enable faster execution across the full product lifecycle. Earlier in his career, he held senior leadership roles at Avalara, Expedia, Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group.

“Five9 is at the center of one of the most important shifts in customer experience as AI reshapes how companies engage with their customers,” said Niranjan Vijayaragavan, Chief Technology Officer of Five9. “I’m excited to work with the team to accelerate innovation across the platform and deliver technology that helps customers move faster and operate with greater intelligence.”

Rob Hornish is a seasoned sales executive with more than 30 years of experience building high-performing teams and driving go-to-market transformation. He has a track record of building teams that drive revenue growth and translate complex technology into measurable business outcomes. He most recently served as Chief Sales Officer at Redaptive, where he led the company's go-to-market transformation in the energy-as-a-service market. Earlier in his career, he played a key role in McAfee Enterprise's Americas business, helping position the company for its IPO and eventual sale for $4 billion, and held senior leadership roles at Polycom and Cisco Systems.

“Five9 has an incredible market opportunity and a strong foundation of customers, partners and innovation,” said Rob Hornish, Chief Sales Officer of Five9. “I’m excited to work with the team to build on that trust and bring disciplined, customer-first execution to the next stage of growth.”

Sven Linsmaier joins Five9 as Executive Vice President, Transformation and Strategy, where he will lead enterprise strategy, oversee Corporate Development, and drive the company's highest-priority initiatives. With deep experience scaling high-growth SaaS companies, Sven most recently served as VP of Business Finance and Operations at Workday, where he partnered with the C-suite to drive enterprise-wide strategic initiatives, standardize the executive operating rhythm, and shape the company's build, buy, or partner strategy. Prior to Workday, he served as Chief Operating Officer at Convex, scaling the company's core operations, and spent nine years at Boston Consulting Group driving large-scale transformation for global clients.

“Five9 is at an inflection point, with real momentum in AI and a clear opportunity to accelerate how we operate and grow,” said Sven Linsmaier, Executive Vice President, Transformation and Strategy of Five9. “I'm excited to help build the strategic infrastructure that lets this team move faster and execute with greater discipline across the business.”

Five9 is committed to ensuring business continuity through these leadership changes. As a result, Panos Kozanian, Executive Vice President of Product Engineering, Jonathan Rosenberg, Chief Technology Officer, and Matthew Tuckness, Chief Revenue Officer will each remain with the Company in advisory capacities for a period of time to support the transitions.

To learn more about Five9’s leadership team and AI-driven CX strategy, visit https://www.five9.com/.

About Five9

Five9 is the proven, open cloud platform for customer experience. Cloud-native since 2001 and built by voice experts for the agentic era, Five9 powers contact centers for more than 3,500 enterprises across 140+ countries, including leading health systems, financial institutions, and organizations across every major industry. The Five9 platform, powered by Genius AI, serves every channel and workflow, together with the governance, control, and ecosystem flexibility that even the most regulated enterprises demand. Practical AI that learns from every interaction, driving real outcomes for customers and the businesses that serve them.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the statements in the quotes from our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Sales Officer and Executive Vice President, Transformation and Strategy, including statements regarding our strategy and opportunity, that are based on our current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include, among others: (i) the impact of adverse economic conditions, including the impact of macroeconomic challenges, global tariff increases and potential future increases and announcements regarding same, continued inflation, uncertainty regarding consumer spending, high interest rates, fluctuations in currency rates, the impact of current and potential global conflicts, and other factors, may continue to harm our business; (ii) if we are unable to attract new clients or sell additional services and functionality to our existing clients, our revenue and revenue growth will be harmed; (iii) if our existing clients terminate their subscriptions or reduce their subscriptions and related usage, or fail to grow subscriptions at the rate they have in the past or that we might expect, our revenues and gross margins will be harmed and we will be required to spend more money to grow our client base; (iv) because a significant percentage of our revenue is derived from existing customers, downturns or upturns in new sales will not be immediately reflected in our operating results and may be difficult to discern; (v) the risk these newly hired executives do not succeed as expected; (vi) if we fail to manage our technical operations infrastructure, our existing customers may experience service outages, our new customers may experience delays in the deployment of our solution and we could be subject to claims for credits or damages, among other things; (vii) if we are unable to attract and retain highly skilled leaders and other employees, our business and results of operations may be harmed; (viii) as AI solutions will likely perform an increasing proportion of contact center interactions, if we are unable to replace decreases in subscription revenue from licenses with revenue from the sale of additional AI solutions, our revenue, results of operations and business will be harmed; (ix) further development of our AI solutions may not be successful, may not achieve market acceptance or compete effectively against our competitors, and may result in reputational harm and our future operating results could be materially harmed; (x) the AI technology and features incorporated into our solution include new and evolving technologies that may present both legal and business risks; (xi) we have established, and are continuing to increase, our network of technology solution distributors and resellers to sell our solution; our failure to effectively develop, manage, and maintain this network could materially harm our revenues; (xii) our quarterly and annual results may fluctuate significantly, including as a result of the timing and success of new product and feature introductions by us, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business and may result in decreases in the price of our common stock; (xiii) our historical growth may not be indicative of our future growth, and even if we continue to grow rapidly, we may fail to manage our growth effectively; (xiv) failure to adequately retain and expand our sales force will impede our growth; (xv) the use of AI by our workforce may present risks to our business; (xvi) the contact center software solutions market is subject to rapid technological change, and we must develop and sell incremental and new solutions in order to maintain and grow our business; (xvii) our growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties and our failure to successfully maintain, grow and manage these relationships could harm our business; (xviii) the markets in which we participate involve a high number of competitors that is continuing to increase, and if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could be harmed; (xix) we continue to expand our international operations, which exposes us to significant macroeconomic and other risks; (xx) security breaches, cybersecurity incidents, and improper access to, use of, or disclosure of our data or our customers’ data, or other cyber-attacks on our systems, could result in litigation and regulatory risk, harm our reputation, our business or financial results; (xxi) we may acquire other companies, or technologies, or be the target of strategic transactions, or be impacted by transactions by other companies, which could divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders or use a significant amount of our cash resources and otherwise disrupt our operations and harm our operating results; (xxii) we sell our solution to larger organizations that require longer sales and implementation cycles and often demand more configuration and integration services or customized features and functions that we may not offer, any of which could delay or prevent these sales and harm our growth rates, business and operating results; (xxiii) we rely on third-party telecommunications and internet service providers to provide our customers and their customers with telecommunication services and connectivity to our cloud contact center software and any failure by these service providers to provide reliable services could cause us to lose customers and subject us to claims for credits or damages, among other things; (xxiv) prior to 2025, we had a history of losses and we may be unable to sustain profitability; (xxv) our stock price has been volatile, may continue to be volatile and may decline, including due to factors beyond our control; (xxvi) we may not be able to secure additional financing on favorable terms, or at all, to meet our future capital needs; (xxvii) failure to comply with laws and regulations could harm our business and our reputation; (xxviii) we may not have sufficient cash to service our convertible senior notes and repay such notes, if required, and other risks attendant to our convertible senior notes and increased debt levels; and (xxix) the other risks detailed from time-to-time under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof and readers should not unduly rely on such statements. We undertake no obligation to update the information contained in this press release, including in any forward-looking statements.

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Media Contact
Mandy Knotts
Corporate Marketing Senior Director
Press@five9.com

Source: Five9, Inc.