Fortinet vs Volkswagen: Founders, CEOs and History

Fortinet

Founded

2000

Headquarters

Sunnyvale, California

Current CEO

Ken Xie

Employees

15,109

Volkswagen

Founded

1937

Headquarters

Wolfsburg, Germany

Current CEO

Oliver Blume

Employees

663,000

Fortinet

• Ken Xie

  Ken Xie co-founded Fortinet in 2000 with his brother Michael and has led it as Chairman and CEO since. Before Fortinet he co-founded NetScreen Technologies, a hardware-accelerated firewall company that Juniper Networks acquired in 2004 for about $4 billion.

• Michael Xie

  Michael Xie co-founded Fortinet with his brother Ken Xie in 2000 and serves as President and Chief Technology Officer. He oversees engineering, including the FortiOS operating system and the FortiASIC processors that accelerate FortiGate firewalls.

Volkswagen

• Ferdinand Porsche

  Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was an Austrian-born automotive engineer who had worked for Lohner, Austro-Daimler and Daimler-Benz before opening his own design office in Stuttgart in 1931.

Fortinet

1. Ken Xie2000–present

   Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

   Xie is widely recognized as one of the most successful and enduring pioneers of the modern cybersecurity industry.

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2. Michael Xie2000–present

   Co-Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer

   Co-founded Fortinet with his brother Ken Xie in 2000 and has served as President and CTO, directing engineering and the custom silicon that differentiates FortiGate.

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3. Christiane Ohlgart2023–present

   Chief Financial Officer

   Serving as interim CFO, she steered the company through a severe, highly volatile period of plunging hardware sales, aggressively pushing the company's transition toward higher-margin software and services revenue.

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Volkswagen

1. Hermann Münch1946–1947

   Chief Executive Officer

   Early executive involved in the incredibly complex immediate post-war administration of the completely destroyed factory under British military control.

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2. Heinrich Nordhoff1948–1968

   Chief Executive Officer

   The absolute legendary post-war architect who took the ruins of the VW factory and transformed the Beetle into a massive, globally beloved cultural icon and economic miracle.

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3. Kurt Lotz1968–1971

   Chief Executive Officer

   Early post-war leader who began the critical process of diversifying VW's lineup beyond relying entirely on a single model (the Beetle).

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4. Rudolf Leiding1971–1975

   Chief Executive Officer

   Crucial CEO who managed the extremely difficult, highly risky transition away from the iconic but severely outdated Beetle toward modern, front-wheel-drive water-cooled cars (like the Golf).

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5. Toni Schmücker1975–1982

   Chief Executive Officer

   Guided the company through the severe financial crises of the 1970s, ensuring the successful launch and massive adoption of the original VW Golf.

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6. Carl Hahn1982–1993

   Chief Executive Officer

   As CEO in the 1980s, he executed the massive, highly strategic acquisitions of SEAT and Skoda, laying the foundation for VW's absolute dominance in Europe.

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7. Ferdinand Piëch1993–2002

   Chief Executive Officer

   As the legendary, absolutely ruthless patriarch (and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche), he transformed VW from a struggling mass-market brand into the most powerful automotive conglomerate on Earth.

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8. Bernd Pischetsrieder2002–2006

   Chief Executive Officer

   Serving as CEO from 2002 to 2006, he oversaw the incredibly complex integration of massive luxury brands like Bugatti and Bentley into the VW Group portfolio.

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9. Martin Winterkorn2007–2015

   Chief Executive Officer

   As the notoriously demanding, absolutely feared CEO, he oversaw massive global expansion but fostered a culture of absolute terror that led engineers to cheat rather than admit failure.

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10. Matthias Müller2015–2018

    Chief Executive Officer

    As CEO during the darkest period in modern VW history, he initiated the massive cultural purge of the toxic, highly secretive engineering culture that caused the cheating scandal.

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11. Herbert Diess2018–2022

    Chief Executive Officer

    Serving as CEO, he forcefully dragged the massive, highly bureaucratic legacy automaker into the Tesla era, though his abrasive style alienated the powerful Porsche-Piëch families.

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12. Oliver Blume2022–present

    Chairman of the Board of Management

    He also ran Porsche AG alongside the group role until Michael Leiters took over as Porsche CEO on January 1, 2026, leaving Blume focused on Volkswagen Group.

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Fortinet

• Everest2025Undisclosed
• Lacework2024Undisclosed
• Next DLP2024Undisclosed
• ShieldX2021Undisclosed
• Sken.Ai2021Undisclosed
• OPAQ Networks2020Undisclosed

Volkswagen

• Porsche AG2012Undisclosed
• Bentley Motors1998Undisclosed
• Auto Union / Audi1965Undisclosed