Rocket Companies has appointed Alessio Sanfilippo as chief executive officer of Redfin, effective immediately, the company said on 31 August 2026. The appointment gives the Seattle based brokerage a dedicated chief executive again, and hands the role to an executive whose career has been built in data, analytics and product work at consumer technology companies rather than in residential property.
Sanfilippo succeeds Varun Krishna, who had been running Redfin directly and who continues as chief executive of Rocket Companies. The two executives have worked together before, at Intuit. The appointment also completes a transition that began in January 2026, when Glenn Kelman, who had been Redfin's chief executive for more than 20 years, stepped down to join the venture firm Greylock as an executive in residence. Rocket said Sanfilippo has been a Redfin customer for more than a decade, across multiple home purchases.
Sanfilippo joins from Meta, where he was vice president of insights for Reality Labs, leading global data science, data engineering and user research teams and helping to build the market for the group's AI enabled wearable glasses. He previously led data and user research for WhatsApp, work that shaped the messaging service's United States growth strategy as it passed 100 million monthly active users in the country. Before Meta he led data and analytics at Intuit, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning across the company's tax and small business accounting products, and earlier in his career he held roles at SAP and Hotwire. In total he brings more than 20 years of experience across product, data, analytics and technology.
Redfin has been part of Rocket Companies since July 2025, when Rocket acquired the brokerage in a deal worth 1.75 billion dollars. Redfin kept its own brand and its Seattle headquarters after the transaction and has operated as a Rocket subsidiary rather than being absorbed into the parent. In the period since the acquisition closed, the business has been overseen from the top of the parent company, with Krishna combining the Redfin brief with the Rocket chief executive role.
The choice of a technology and data executive rather than a property industry veteran is the clearest signal in the announcement. Sanfilippo's disclosed record is in data science, analytics and the application of artificial intelligence to consumer products at scale, and it is a reasonable inference, though not something Rocket stated, that the parent wants Redfin's next phase to be defined by data and product capability rather than by brokerage expansion alone. A second inference, again not asserted in the release, is that the appointment frees Krishna to concentrate on Rocket Companies as a whole after a period of holding both jobs. What the announcement does confirm is that Redfin retains a separate leadership structure inside Rocket more than a year after the acquisition, and that its new chief executive comes to the company having been one of its long standing customers.
