Google's longtime advertising chief is leaving after 15 years to join VC firm Greylock

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Sridhar Ramaswamy heads up Google's ad products.

• Sridhar Ramaswamy, who helped build Google's ad business into a money-machine, is leaving to join a venture capital firm.
• He will join Greylock Partners as a venture partner.
• He started at Google's Ad groups in 2003 was generating $1.5 billion. In 2013, the company recorded ad revenue of $95 billion.
• Ramaswamy will be replaced by Prabhakar Raghavan, vice president of Engineering at Google.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, one of the people responsible for Google's success in advertising, is leaving the company after 15 years to become a venture capitalist, according to reports.

Ramaswamy will be replaced by Prabhakar Raghavan, a Vice President of Engineering at Google, the company said.

Ramaswamy, senior vice president of advertising and commerce at Google, will become a venture partner at VC firm Greylock Partners, the company said in a post on Medium.

"I've worked with Prabhakar over many years now and can think of no better person to lead our monetization efforts," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement provided to Business Insider. "Prabhakar has incredible management experience, and the deep technical expertise to match. He is the right person to succeed Sridhar, whose contributions over the past 15 years have helped grow Google into the company it is today."

Ramaswamy oversaw the Google algorithms that ensure its ads are targeted to users of its services in the most profitable way.

He joined the ads team in 2003, when it was considered a "backwater." That year, according to Greylock Partners, the ads group saw $1.5 billion in revenue.

Last year, Google's ad business totaled more than $95 billion.

At Greylock, Ramaswamy will invest in startups that focus on AI, data and analytics, the VC firms said.

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