C3 AI founder and Chief Executive Officer Tom Siebel today announced that he will step down because of health issues.

Shares of the artificial intelligence company closed 11% lower on the news. In a note, Wedbush Securities Inc. analyst Dan Ives told investors that Siebel’s resignation “significantly increases” the chance of C3 AI getting acquired. He estimates a sale could happen in the next three to 12 months.

“After being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in early 2025, I have experienced significant visual impairment,” Siebel said in a statement. “For C3 AI to reach its full potential — which I believe is spectacular — the board and I have initiated a search for a new CEO who can take the company to the next level of growth and success.”

Siebel will remain CEO until C3 AI names a successor. He will subsequently “continue in the role of Executive Chairman focusing on strategy, product innovation, strategic partner and customer relationships,” he stated.

The enterprise software veteran launched C3 AI, officially C3.ai Inc., in 2009, three years after Oracle Corp. acquired his previous software company for $5.85 billion. The AI provider went on to raise more than $220 million in venture capital. C3 raised another $651 million when it went public on the Nasdaq in 2020.

The company sells a toolkit called C3 Agentic AI Platform that enterprises use to develop AI applications. It includes prepackaged software building blocks, as well as an extension that makes the VS Code code editor more suitable for AI development. The platform can also ease workload management tasks such as provisioning infrastructure.

Alongside its development tools, C3 AI sells a collection of pre-built AI applications. For private sector customers, they speed up tasks such as managing store inventory and forecasting customer demand. C3 also sells AI applications geared toward the public sector.

The third component of the company’s product portfolio is called C3 Generative AI. It’s a platform that uses collections of AI agents to automate tasks such as analyzing financial data.

C3 AI generated $108.7 million in revenue last quarter, 26% more than the same time a year earlier. The company’s AI software accounted for more than three-quarters of that sum, while the rest mostly came from its prioritized engineering services unit. The unit enables customers to accelerate the development of upcoming features on C3 AI’s product roadmap in exchange for a fee.

The company expects to close its current fiscal year with sales of $447.5 million to $484.5 million. That would represent a 25% increase on the top end of the range, the same rate at which C3 AI’s revenue grew in fiscal 2024. 

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