Matthias Funke

Vice President, Portfolio Management | IBM Corporate Strategy | Driving Growth, Efficiencies & AI-Powered Portfolio Optimization | Play to Win in Enterprise Tech

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

About

Play to Win. As Vice President, Portfolio Management at IBM Corporate Strategy, I lead a new mission to optimize product investments across the company’s portfolio — delivering on-the-glass performance insights, Play-to-Win and Invest-to-Win guidance, and the best non-sales dashboard in IBM. Over two decades at IBM I have built and scaled high-performing technology businesses at global scale. I served as Lab Director of the 300+ employee Poland Software Lab with P&L responsibility, successfully integrating the Netezza acquisition and delivering the first non-U.S.-designed system (Mini Mako) with major revenue impact. I then drove product strategy for the Hybrid Data Management portfolio, modernizing Db2 as the AI database, launching the Hybrid Data Management Platform, embracing open-source databases, and delivering the strongest growth in five years (>8% YoY) with net customer gains. More recently, as Executive Director of Watson AIOps, I stood up a new product line from startup to GA in under two years — 41 customers in six months, 13% net revenue growth (transaction revenue +51%), and Gartner AIOps Market Guide recognition. What distinguishes me is the rare blend of general management, deep technical product strategy & execution - building experimentation-driven teams that win in complex, competitive markets. I thrive on turning mature portfolios and emerging technologies into sustained revenue engines. I’m always open to conversations with boards and leaders focused on enterprise AI, data platforms, and strategic portfolio transformation. "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - Ronald H Coase

Experience

  • IBM (29 yrs 2 mos)
    • Responsible Technology Board Member
      Mar 2026 - Present · 5 mos

      Align IBM's development and use of AI and other emerging technologies with our core values.

    • Vice President, Portfolio Management, IBM Corporate Strategy
      Nov 2021 - Present · 4 yrs 9 mos

      “Play to win” -- leverage market and competitive insights to assess IBM product portfolio performance relative to market growth and competitor market share. Provide guidance to disproportionally allocate capital and invest to win with growth products, while optimizing expense elsewhere Portfolio Management as a service: Empower product and portfolio leaders with self-service analytics to short-cut toil and accelerate time to value.

    • Executive Director Watson for AIOps and Netcool
      Jan 2020 - Oct 2021 · 1 yr 10 mos

      Launch and development of Watson for AIOps - infusing ML into IT workflows and experiences to improve user experience and reduce risks and issues around IT applications and infrastructure services.

  • CAD Data Management at Brose
    1995 - 1996 · 1 yr

    Evaluation of the current CAD data archiving processes and tooling in respect to legal and industry guidelines. Design and partial implementation of enhanced solution. Worked on tooling to automate and simplify the management of CAD data produced by CATIA and CADDS.