Alexis Zheng Joins G2 as CPTO: What It Signals About AI Software Discovery

TL;DR

• G2 hired Alexis Zheng as Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO)—a combined CPO+CTO role
• She built AI products at Cruise (autonomous vehicles), Grab, Uber, and LinkedIn
• The CPTO structure means G2 sees product strategy and technical execution as inseparable—a sign they're treating AI as core infrastructure, not a feature
• For vendors: G2 is investing heavily in becoming the AI citation source for software. Your review content matters more than star ratings.
• G2 now has a leadership team built for AI-first product development. The Capterra acquisition, the hiring surge, and this appointment all point the same direction.

Who Is Alexis Zheng?

G2 announced that Alexis Zheng is joining as Chief Product and Technology Officer. She's coming from HPE, where she was VP of Product Management for AI.

Her background is interesting. She spent time at:

• Cruise (2020-2023) — Built the autonomous driving "AI Brain" as Head of Product for CruiseAI
• Grab (2018-2020) — Led AI/ML product development across Southeast Asia's largest superapp
• Uber (2016-2018) — Worked on dynamic pricing and ML-based personalization
• LinkedIn (2014-2016) — Built social analytics and recommendation systems

The pattern: AI-native product development at scale. A person with this background should know how to take massive datasets and turn them into AI-powered products for people to use.

G2's CEO Godard Abel called her "uniquely suited to help G2 achieve our vision of transforming software discovery through our AI-powered marketplace."

Why CPTO Instead of CPO?

Here's the detail that caught our attention.

G2 hired a Chief Product and Technology Officer—a combined role where one person owns both product strategy and technical execution.

G2 already has a CTO (Mike Wheeler, co-founder since 2012) and an "AI CTO" (Andrej Žukov-Gregorič, who joined through the unSurvey acquisition last June). So why add a CPTO?

The CPTO role typically shows up when a company decides that what to build and how to build it are the same question. When the product IS the technology.

For G2, that makes sense. Their product roadmap is now inseparable from AI decisions:

• How do you structure review data so LLMs can use it?
• What features help G2 become the source AI systems cite?
• How do you build products that make G2's data more valuable to both humans and machines?

You can't have a CPO saying "I want this feature" while a CTO says "technically we should do it differently." With AI infrastructure, you need one person holding both threads.

Zheng's background looks like a fit for this. She's a product leader who's spent a decade in AI-heavy environments — autonomous vehicles, ML-based pricing, recommendation systems. If that translates, she'd understand the technical constraints without being an engineer.

What G2 Is Building

We've been tracking G2's moves. This hire fits a pattern:

• The Capterra acquisition — Combined review databases, unified taxonomy. Stated goal: become the trusted data source for AI software recommendations.
• The hiring surge — Heavy investment in AI engineering and "Generative Engine Optimization" (GEO). They're building G2.ai, their own AI recommendation product. It doesn't really work yet, but it's ambitious.
• The leadership structure — A CPTO from autonomous vehicles AI, an AI CTO from an acquired AI research company, ~100 engineers in Bengaluru.

G2 has said out loud what they want: to be "the primary source of truth for the LLMs and agents" that inform software buying.

Zheng's quote in the announcement fits this:

"The most successful platforms in the AI era will be those with the most reliable signals—making trust the true last mile of enterprise AI adoption."

"Reliable signals" does a lot of work there. It's technical (how data is structured for AI systems) and strategic (how G2 positions itself as trustworthy) at the same time.

What This Means for Vendors

If you're a software company managing your visibility posture across directories, here's what we'd pay attention to:

Your review content matters more than your star rating

G2 is building toward a future where AI systems learn from review text—the actual words customers use to describe your product. The problems it solves. What makes it different. Who it's good for.

That means the substance of your reviews becomes part of how AI understands and recommends your product. A 4.5-star rating with thin reviews is less useful than a 4.2-star rating with detailed, specific feedback. (For that reason, we'd avoid G2's AI-assisted review feature—we don't think it yields good results yet.)

Don't bet everything on G2

G2 wants to dominate AI software discovery. Every recent move suggests they're serious about it—the Capterra acquisition, the hiring surge, and now this.

The problem: the more dominance they have, the more they'll charge. We already see this—even to display badges you earned, you need a paid plan.

The good news: AI is highly contextual. It pulls from G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, SourceForge, product docs, and niche directories—depending on the query. Even if G2 dominates, other sources still matter.

So diversify your listings. Learn how Blastra can help.

What This Means for the Industry

Most review platforms and directories are older businesses. They weren't built by teams thinking about AI from day one. G2 now has:

• A CPTO from autonomous vehicles AI
• An AI CTO from an acquired AI research company
• ~100 engineers in Bengaluru building AI infrastructure

This looks like a structural advantage. We'll see if it works, but it's definitely a move in the right direction.

Curious if others will follow suit.

FAQ

What is a CPTO?

Chief Product and Technology Officer. A combined role that owns both product strategy (what to build) and technical execution (how to build it). Companies use this structure when product and technology are inseparable—common in AI-first companies.

Who was G2's CPO before Alexis Zheng?

Sara Rossio was G2's CPO for over four years. She recently departed. The CPTO role is a restructuring, not a direct replacement.

Does G2 still have a CTO?

Yes. Mike Wheeler is co-founder and CTO (since 2012). G2 also has Andrej Žukov-Gregorič as "AI CTO" following the unSurvey acquisition. The CPTO role sits alongside these positions, focused on product-technical strategy.

What does this mean for the Capterra acquisition?

The acquisition is still expected to close Q1 2026. This hire suggests G2 is building the leadership team to execute on the combined vision—unified taxonomy, combined review data, AI-powered discovery.

Should I prioritize G2 over other directories?

G2 is clearly investing heavily. But AI systems cite multiple sources, and buyers still comparison shop across platforms. A presence on G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, SourceForge, and relevant niche directories is still smart. Diversification protects you from any single platform's changes.

Related Reading

• G2's Hiring After the Capterra Announcement: What They're Building — Analysis of G2's AI and GEO hiring patterns
• G2 Acquires Capterra: What It Means for Software Vendors — The acquisition that started the consolidation
• B2B Software Directories & AI SEO Strategy — How AI recommends software and why directories matter
• What Is Visibility Posture? — Blastra's framework for third-party presence