Airtable CEO in 2026: Howie Liu, Bending Spoons and Who Runs Airtable Now

Who is the CEO of Airtable?

Airtable has had no publicly named CEO since September 4, 2026, when Bending Spoons completed its purchase of the company (Airtable). Co-founder Howie Liu, who had led Airtable since 2012, stepped down to work full time on Hyperagent, which became an independent company (AI Engineer). Airtable’s plan after the sale was set out by its new product lead, Alessandro Savarese (Airtable); Bending Spoons is run by its CEO and co-founder, Luca Ferrari (SEC).

Howie Liu at a glance

Airtable CEO email address: how to reach Howie Liu

Liu published a work address himself: on Lenny’s Podcast in August 2025 he told listeners, “You can also email me directly, howie@airtable.com, anytime you have ideas, feedback, et cetera.” (Lenny’s Podcast) He left Airtable in September 2026, so that address may no longer reach him. His X bio now points to Hyperagent, and none of his profiles list a new email (checked Nov 2, 2026).

Airtable email address pattern

Airtable staff mostly use {first}.{last}@airtable.com, according to LeadIQ (LeadIQ) and Prospeo (Prospeo). Liu’s own address followed the shorter {first}@ form.

Before emailing any pattern-based address, run it through a verifier: a bounce hurts deliverability for every later send. All Airtable patterns, domains and official inboxes are on the Airtable email format page.

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Career timeline

From College Station to an $11 billion valuation and a sale

Liu grew up in College Station, Texas, where his father earned a biochemistry PhD at Texas A&M. He taught himself C++ at 13, went to Duke at 16 and graduated in 2009 (Forbes). His first startup, Etacts, a Y Combinator email contact manager, was bought by Salesforce in December 2010 (TechCrunch).

After Salesforce, he started Airtable with Andrew Ofstad, a Duke classmate, and Emmett Nicholas. They wanted “a spreadsheet with the power of a database” and spent three years building a prototype (Forbes). Airtable launched publicly in February 2015 (TechCrunch) and was valued at $11 billion pre-money by December 2021 (Airtable). When the market turned, Liu cut 20% of staff in December 2022 (TechCrunch) and 27% in September 2023, saying “The market has tipped towards favoring efficient growth over growth at all costs” (Forbes).

In June 2025 he relaunched Airtable as an AI-native app platform (X), and in February 2026 launched Hyperagent, an agents platform (X). In August 2026 he agreed to sell Airtable to Bending Spoons, after moving Hyperagent into a separate company (SEC), and on the day the deal closed he said: “I’m proud of what the Airtable team has built and excited to see the business enter this next chapter.” (Bending Spoons)

In his own words

“Instead of just adding more AI capabilities to our existing platform, we treated this as a refounding moment for the company.”

— Relaunching Airtable, June 24, 2025 (X)

“Certainly every software product in my opinion, has to be refounded because AI is such a paradigm shift.”

— Lenny’s Podcast, August 31, 2025 (Lenny’s Podcast)

“Then I think you should sell. You should find a buyer for that company and then go.”

— On founders who can’t rebuild their company for AI, Lenny’s Podcast, August 31, 2025. He added that in Airtable’s case, its no-code building blocks made it better placed than starting from scratch (Lenny’s Podcast)

“I’ve been personally burning through billions of tokens a week for the past few months as a builder.”

— Launching Hyperagent, February 19, 2026 (X)

Airtable’s leadership

Full company profile, including the sale and funding: Airtable in 2026: revenue, valuation, funding, CEO.