Vercel has added Susan St. Ledger to its board of directors. The former president of worldwide field operations at HashiCorp brings deep expertise in scaling go-to-market strategies for infrastructure and security software providers. This move comes shortly after the company’s Series F funding round, which valued Vercel at $9.3 billion and underscored its growing role in AI infrastructure.
St. Ledger’s appointment aligns with Vercel’s push into enterprise AI deployments. Her track record spans sales leadership, customer expansion, and revenue growth at major tech firms. Vercel executives highlighted her ability to navigate cloud shifts while prioritizing developer needs.
Susan St. Ledger’s Career Trajectory
St. Ledger started as a software engineer at the National Security Agency, leveraging her computer science background from the University of Scranton. She later held executive roles at Sun Microsystems and Salesforce, focusing on sales and operations in emerging software markets.
Her tenure at Splunk marked a period of aggressive expansion. As president of worldwide field operations, she helped grow annual revenue from about $700 million to nearly $2.5 billion by building a multi-product sales organization. She repeated this success at Okta in the same role, refining go-to-market models for identity management solutions.
At HashiCorp, St. Ledger managed the full customer lifecycle, from initial sales through deployment and upsell, for tools in infrastructure automation and security. She served on HashiCorp’s board from pre-IPO stages until its 2025 acquisition by IBM for $6.4 billion, providing continuity during the transition.
Board Roles and Strategic Insights
St. Ledger currently sits on Klaviyo’s board, contributing to the marketing automation provider’s governance amid its own growth phase. Her experience positions her to guide Vercel through enterprise adoption challenges in AI-native platforms.
Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch praised her iterative approach to enterprise building, noting it matches the company’s ethos of continuous improvement. Chief Operating Officer Jeanne Grosser emphasized St. Ledger’s history of scaling sales teams across cloud eras without sidelining developers.
St. Ledger views Vercel as emblematic of infrastructure evolution—from SaaS abstractions to AI-automated operations. She anticipates helping customers maximize value as AI handles routine tasks, freeing developers for innovation.
Vercel’s Recent Momentum
Vercel closed a $300 million Series F round in September 2025, co-led by Accel and GIC, with participation from BlackRock, StepStone, Khosla Ventures, and others. A secondary tender offer of about $300 million followed for employees and early investors. The funding supports expansion of the AI Cloud, an infrastructure layer for AI applications and agents.
The platform underpins frameworks like Next.js and the AI SDK, which sees 3 million weekly downloads. Vercel’s v0 AI coding assistant, adopted by eBay, Stripe, and WPP, has driven user base doubling and 82% year-over-year revenue growth. Customers range from AI startups like Anthropic and OpenAI to enterprises including PayPal and Nike.
Recent hires bolster this trajectory, including Grosser from Stripe as COO and Aparna Sinha from Capital One for product leadership. Security features address “vibecoding” risks, appealing to risk-averse organizations.
AI Cloud Capabilities
Vercel’s AI Cloud integrates developer tools with self-managing infrastructure for full-stack AI apps. v0 now includes a mobile beta for voice and camera-based prototyping, syncing with desktop sessions. The AI Gateway and Sandbox further enable secure AI workflows.
This stack reduces build times by up to 24 times and page loads by 95% for users like OpenAI and Ramp. Partnerships, such as with AWS Bedrock for inference scaling, handle millions of v0-generated UIs.
Implications for Enterprise AI
St. Ledger joins a board featuring Stripe CFO Steffan Tomlinson, strengthening Vercel’s enterprise focus. Her infrastructure background complements Vercel’s developer-first model, aiding penetration into sectors like consulting and retail.
As AI agents integrate into workflows, platforms like Vercel’s must balance speed with security and scalability. St. Ledger’s oversight of customer journeys at HashiCorp and beyond equips her to refine Vercel’s strategies for global enterprises.
Vercel’s growth reflects broader trends in AI-native development, where abstraction layers simplify complex deployments. With her addition, the company gains a steady hand for sustaining momentum post-funding.
About Vercel
Vercel’s AI Cloud provides the tools and self-driving infrastructure to build, scale, and secure intelligent applications. As the most popular DX platform for frontend development and the team behind AI SDK, Next.js, and v0, we help customers like OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, and Supreme build for the AI-native web – and ship at the speed of ideas. To experience the future of AI application development, visit vercel.com.
