July 22, 2026
Ericsson Tasks New Vonage CEO to ‘Deliver Superior Customer Engagement’
Ericsson has a new Chief Executive for Vonage, and this time it’s an internal promotion with a track record already on the board rather than an outside bet. The Swedish telecoms giant confirmed on 21 July that Christophe Van de Weyer, currently Head of Vonage’s API business, will take over as Head of Business Area Global Communications Platform and CEO of Vonage. He will pick up a seat on Ericsson’s Executive Team along the way.
He replaces Niklas Heuveldop, who steps down on 15 August after two and a half years in the role. Heuveldop will stay on as an adviser through to the end of the year. Heuveldop joined Ericsson back in 1993 and has spent the past decade on its Executive Team. This included a stint overseeing North America that produced the $14 billion network transformation deal with AT&T.
Van de Weyer only joined Vonage last year, but his CV reads like a checklist for the job. He was chief executive of Telesign, held several senior roles at Proximus, and spent close to two decades at Bain & Company advising some of the world’s largest telecoms operators.
Van de Weyer says:
“Ericsson and Vonage are at the forefront of network-powered solutions combining AI, data, and API to transform enterprise workflows and deliver superior customer engagement. I’m looking forward to continuing our work and further accelerating our growth momentum alongside the exceptionally talented teams at Vonage and Ericsson.”
His remit at Vonage has centred on Communications Platform as a Service and Network APIs. These are the programmable voice, messaging and verification tools that increasingly sit behind AI-driven customer engagement. Ericsson’s Börje Ekholm made the promotion logic plain:
“Christophe brings a deep understanding of the market for communication services and he has done a great job getting the Business Unit API at Vonage back to growth.”
Ekholm’s language suggests Van de Weyer is very much being rewarded for work already done.
The Broader Ericsson Business and the New CEO Journeys
Here’s where the story arguably gets a little interesting than a standard executive reshuffle. Since the start of this year, Ericsson has stopped breaking out Vonage’s revenue in its quarterly results. This is a line it had reported consistently since buying the company for $6.2 billion in 2022. On last week’s earnings call, Ekholm told analysts the business “has not been contributing” to group profitability. He stopped short of giving a date for when that might change.
Ericsson picked the person already running the API business for the top job, which points to continuity rather than an outsider’s reset. But it’s worth noting Ekholm is departing too. He is stepping down as Group CEO at the end of September, and Per Narvinger will take his place. Both changes were confirmed within five weeks of each other.
What It Means If You’re Already Using Vonage
For businesses running voice, messaging, or identity verification through Vonage’s APIs, none of this should prompt an immediate rethink. The product side has kept moving. Vonage embedded native voice AI into ServiceNow workflows for contact centre customers earlier this year. It also connected Amazon’s Nova Sonic speech model to its Voice API. Meanwhile, in January, it expanded its Network API partnership with Freenow by Lyft to strengthen fraud prevention across the ride-hailing app’s European markets. Heuveldop’s own summary of where he’s leaving things captures the mood Ericsson wants customers to take away:
“Vonage’s turn-around continues to gain momentum, growth has been restored, investments peaked and strategy execution is solid.”
That may well be true, and there’s decent product evidence behind it. It’s also, inevitably, the sentence a departing chief executive is expected to say on his way out the door. Van de Weyer inherits a business with major product wins and a reporting line that’s gone quiet at the same time. That’s worth raising directly at your next account review.
