Gary Kovacs
Gary Kovacs (born 1963 or 1964 in Toronto, Canada) is a technology executive who has led several major companies. He grew up in Toronto with Hungarian parents and later moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue tech opportunities. He studied at the University of Calgary, earning a Bachelor of Commerce in 1990 and an MBA in 1999, and he is a certified communications electronics technologist.
Kovacs began his career at IBM in 1990, rising to Worldwide Program Director for IBM’s software division. He then became President of Zi Corporation, a company known for predictive text and mobile input. In 2003 he joined Macromedia, and after Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005, he held senior roles in Adobe’s Mobile and Devices division, eventually becoming general manager in 2008. He later worked at Sybase (which SAP acquired) as Senior Vice President.
In 2010 Mozilla named Kovacs its CEO. Under his leadership, Mozilla moved into mobile with the Firefox OS project, which Kovacs previewed at Mobile World Congress 2013 with commitments from many operators, though Firefox OS was later discontinued after his departure. He gave a TED Talk in 2012 about online privacy and spoke at the World Economic Forum the same year about building a resilient cyber economy. He stepped down as Mozilla’s CEO in 2013 and remained on Mozilla’s board until 2014.
In July 2013 Kovacs became CEO of AVG Technologies. AVG was bought by Avast in 2016 for about $1.3 billion, and Kovacs left AVG later that year amid a dispute, filing a lawsuit in 2017 alleging wrongful termination and other claims.
Kovacs then served as CEO of Accela, a government technology company, from December 2018 to January 2024.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:21 (CET).