Celonis Appoints Benoit Fouilland as Chief Financial Officer to Drive Next Phase of Growth

MUNICH & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 2, 2024--

Celonis, the global leader in Process Mining and Process Intelligence, today announced the appointment of Benoit Fouilland as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective December 1, 2024. As part of the executive management team, Fouilland will be responsible for the global Finance organization and strategy as Celonis extends its global growth, technology innovation and market leadership.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241202213081/en/

“Benoit is a forward-thinking executive with extremely relevant tech-industry experience, an international outlook, and a proven track record leading global Finance organizations,” said Bastian Nominacher, co-CEO and co-founder of Celonis. “Benoit is the right leader to help us drive and expand our market leadership being fueled by our latest product innovations like the Process Intelligence Graph which creates unparalleled levels of value for our customers and delivers effective enterprise AI.”

Fouilland is a seasoned business leader with over three decades of finance and executive management experience at global, industry-leading companies. He joins Celonis from Contentsquare, a global leader in digital experience analytics, where he served as CFO. Before that he was CFO of Firmenich, the largest private fragrance and taste company in the world, where he was a Celonis customer and instrumental in coordinating their industry-changing merger with DSM, another Celonis customer. Prior to Firmenich, Fouilland held CFO roles at Criteo SA, a global advertising technology company, where he led its successful initial public offering (IPO), SAP AG and Business Objects SA.

“I got to know Celonis five years ago and have been impressed from day one by the power of the platform and the solid foundations on which the company is built,” said Benoit Fouilland. “I admire the remarkable momentum Celonis has gained since then. I am excited by the opportunity to shape the future of process intelligence and to drive impact for leading companies across all industries around the globe. I am thrilled to join the team and looking forward to helping the company scale, sustainably, to its full potential.”

Fouilland has served on the Board of Directors of VTEX, an enterprise digital commerce platform company, since May 2021, where he chairs the audit committee. He earned his MBA from INSEAD (Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires) and has master’s degrees from Université Paris Dauphine and Paris ESLSCA Business School.

About Celonis

Celonis makes processes work for people, companies, and the planet. The Celonis Process Intelligence Platform uses industry-leading process mining and AI technology and augments it with business context to give customers a living digital twin of their business operation. It’s system-agnostic, without bias, and provides everyone with a common language for understanding and improving businesses. Celonis enables its customers to continuously realize significant value across the top, bottom, and green line.

Celonis is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and New York City, USA, with more than 20 offices worldwide.

© 2024 Celonis SE. All rights reserved. Celonis and the Celonis “droplet” logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Celonis SE in Germany and other jurisdictions. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Celonis, the global leader in Process Intelligence, has appointed Benoit Fouilland as CFO (Photo: Business Wire)

The White House and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the operator of the mid-Atlantic power grid to take urgent steps to boost energy supply and curb price hikes, holding a Friday event aimed at addressing a rising concern among voters about the enormous amount of power used for artificial intelligence ahead of elections later this year.

The White House said its National Energy Dominance Council and the governors of several states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, want to try to compel PJM Interconnection to hold a power auction for tech companies to bid on contracts to build new power plants,

The Trump administration and governors will sign a statement of principles toward that end Friday. The plan was first reported by Bloomberg.

“Ensuring the American people have reliable and affordable electricity is one of President Trump’s top priorities, and this would deliver much-needed, long-term relief to the mid-Atlantic region," said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is expected to be at the White House, a person familiar with Shapiro’s plans said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement. Shapiro, a Democrat, made his participation in Friday’s event contingent on including a provision to extend a limit on wholesale electricity price increases for the region’s consumers, the person said.

But the operator of the grid won't be there. “PJM was not invited. Therefore we would not attend,” said spokesperson Jeff Shields.

It was not immediately clear whether President Donald Trump would attend the event, which was not listed on his public schedule.

Trump and the governors are under pressure to insulate consumers and businesses alike from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers. Meanwhile, more Americans are falling behind on their electricity bills.

Consumer advocates say ratepayers in the mid-Atlantic electricity grid — which encompasses all or parts of 13 states stretching from New Jersey to Illinois, as well as Washington, D.C. — are already paying billions of dollars in higher bills to underwrite the cost to supply power to data centers, some of them built, some not.

However, they also say that the billions of dollars that consumers are paying isn’t resulting in the construction of new power plants necessary to meet the rising demand.

Pivotal contests in November will be decided by communities that are home to fast-rising electric bills or fights over who’s footing the bill for the data centers that underpin the explosion in demand for artificial intelligence. In parts of the country, data centers are coming online faster than power plants can be built and connected to the grid.

Electricity costs were a key issue in last year's elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, a data center hotspot, and in Georgia, where Democrats ousted two Republican incumbents for seats on the state’s utility regulatory commission. Voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City all cited economic concerns as the top issue, as Democrats and Republicans gird for a debate over affordability in the intensifying midterm battle to control Congress.

Gas and electric utilities sought or won rate increases of more that $34 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, consumer advocacy organization PowerLines reported. That was more than double the same period a year earlier.

Meta's Stanton Springs Data Center is seen Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Newton County, East of Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)