Chirag Shah

Chief Financial Officer Motive

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Chirag Shah is Chief Financial Officer of Motive, the company formerly known as KeepTruckin, which sells an AI-powered operations platform to businesses in what it calls the physical economy: trucking and logistics fleets, construction firms, agriculture, energy and field services. He joined in December 2024 and runs controllership, financial planning and analysis, and strategic finance. His career is a single, unusually coherent arc through the software subscription model. He spent more than twelve years at Cornerstone OnDemand, arriving in 2009 in finance and corporate strategy, watching the company through its 2011 IPO, running its Growth Markets business as senior vice president and general manager, and finally becoming Chief Financial Officer in February 2021, in which role he took the company through its $5.2 billion take-private sale to Clearlake Capital later that year. He then spent nearly three years as CFO of Kong Inc., the API management platform company, before moving to Motive.

Career Highlights

• Chief Financial Officer of Motive, listed on the company’s own leadership page as of September 2026, alongside co-founder and CEO Shoaib Makani.
• Appointed in December 2024, in an announcement that also reported enterprise annual recurring revenue up 64 per cent year on year, enterprise net revenue retention above 127 per cent, and close to 100,000 customers.
• Appointed Chief Financial Officer and principal financial officer of Cornerstone OnDemand effective 1 February 2021, disclosed to the SEC on Form 8-K.
• Was Cornerstone’s CFO through its $5.2 billion take-private acquisition by Clearlake Capital in 2021.
• Served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Growth Markets at Cornerstone before becoming CFO, a general-management role rather than a finance one.
• Spent roughly twelve and a half years at Cornerstone OnDemand in total, from July 2009, a period over which the company says its annual recurring revenue grew from under $30 million to nearly $900 million.
• As Chief Financial Officer of Kong Inc., helped triple annual recurring revenue and supported a fundraise at an increased valuation.
• Began his career as an investment banker in mergers and acquisitions at Houlihan Lokey, from July 2006 to June 2009.

Professional Journey

Shah started in investment banking, joining Houlihan Lokey in July 2006 and working on mergers, acquisitions and restructurings until June 2009. Houlihan Lokey’s particular strength in restructuring meant the period covering the financial crisis was an unusually intense apprenticeship in company balance sheets under stress.

He left banking in July 2009 for Cornerstone OnDemand, the talent management and corporate learning software company, and stayed more than twelve years. Cornerstone’s own SEC filings describe his time there as “finance and corporate strategy roles of increasing responsibility”, and he was present for the company’s 2011 initial public offering roughly two years after joining. The most interesting step in that progression was sideways rather than up: he became Senior Vice President and General Manager of Growth Markets, taking profit-and-loss ownership of a business unit rather than staying inside the finance function. Finance chiefs with genuine general-management experience are relatively rare, and it is the part of his record that distinguishes him from a pure controller.

In January 2021 Cornerstone’s board appointed him Chief Financial Officer and principal financial officer, effective 1 February. He was 36. The timing put him in the CFO chair for the most consequential transaction in the company’s history: later that year Clearlake Capital took Cornerstone private in a deal valued at $5.2 billion. Running a take-private as a first-time public-company CFO, including the diligence, financing and shareholder process, is a demanding introduction to the role.

He left in 2022 for Kong Inc., the API gateway and service connectivity platform company, as Chief Financial Officer. Kong is a developer-infrastructure business with an open-source core and a commercial enterprise product, a different monetisation problem from Cornerstone’s enterprise HR software. By the company’s account his tenure saw annual recurring revenue triple and a fundraise completed at a higher valuation.

Motive announced his appointment as Chief Financial Officer on 4 December 2024, presenting it alongside a set of growth figures: enterprise annual recurring revenue up 64 per cent year on year, enterprise net revenue retention above 127 per cent, and a customer base approaching 100,000 against what the company sizes as a $46 billion market in physical operations. The business is a hardware-and-software hybrid, putting AI dashcams, telematics devices and sensors into vehicles and equipment and selling the software that sits on top, which makes its finance function more complex than a pure SaaS company’s: there is inventory, hardware cost of goods and device deployment alongside subscription revenue. Shah’s remit covers controllership, financial planning and analysis, and strategic finance.

Education

Georgetown University

B.S., Finance

Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

M.B.A.