NI today announced that its co-founder James Truchard, age 73, who has served as the CEO of NI since the company’s founding in 1976, will step down as CEO.

James Truchard will remain as chairman of the Board.

Alex Davern, age 49, will be the new CEO and president of National Instruments, effective January 1, 2017. Alex Davern has served as chief operating officer of NI since 2010, and chief financial officer since 1997.

“Over the last decade, in the face of a weak industrial economy I have focused my efforts on helping to ensure that we were making the long-term strategic investments necessary to set NI up for future growth,” said James Truchard.

These major platform investments, in key areas like PXI modular instrumentation, RF measurements, CompactRIO, and our entire software platform, will continue providing NI with disruptive platform capabilities needed to expand market opportunity.

Alex Davern, and the rest of the senior management team, including Jeff Kodosky, co-founder and Board member of NI; Eric Starkloff, executive VP of Global Sales and Marketing; Scott Rust, senior VP of R&D; and Duncan Hudson, chief platform officer, have over 100 years of experience at NI.