Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber on why AI makes hardware ‘sexy’ again

Logitech may be known for keyboards, webcams, and gaming gear, but CEO Hanneke Faber is going beyond AI-first. She explains how she’s leading the hardware brand through an AI shift, approaching it as a leadership challenge, not just a tech one. Faber also shares lessons from competitive diving and navigating ever-shifting global tariffs.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

Logitech is known by many people for its computer mouse. “The mouse built this house,” I think you said once, a nice nod to Disney. But in recent months, the conversation about Logitech has been around AI, the cutting edge of technology. It’s kind of a neat trick for a business with a reputation for a not-necessarily-sexy piece of hardware.

Well, of course, we do think that mice are very sexy. But that aside, we’re not just a place that builds mice. In the age of AI, hardware is definitely sexy again. AI needs hands, needs eyes, needs ears. So that’s where we come in, and we’re building AI-enabled products at scale, which is exciting.

You spoke at a Fortune conference last fall. There was a lot of attention around adding an AI agent to your board of directors. Any progress with that?

Yes. I wouldn’t say we have an actual AI agent that’s formally a board member, but we’re using AI very fundamentally in our board meetings and in the preparation for our board meetings. I think we’re lucky. My board members are AI-savvy, all of them. We offered them the same training that we offer to all of our employees. And in preparation for our board meetings, we run the materials through an AI gem that we’ve built. So you get really great feedback, actually, from an AI board member up front. And that helps shape the discussion when we go into the meeting.

And this is your proprietary agent. You’re not sending this out into the world so that Anthropic or OpenAI or someone else can sort of peek in on it?

No. That obviously wouldn’t be smart because the data that’s in there is very confidential. So yes, it’s proprietary.

How much do you consider yourself a technologist? Your background is largely in consumer products at Unilever and Procter & Gamble.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. A little over two years ago, I was selling mayonnaise, literally. So it is a different industry, but there are also a lot of things that you learn in consumer goods, and I also spent time in retail, that is very applicable here. In the end, we sell products for people, for users. So understanding that consumer, that customer, starting from there and designing products that will delight that user is critically important. And that’s no different whether you’re selling mayonnaise and ice cream or mice and cameras.

Now, when you came on board, it was clear that Logitech needed a bit of a turnaround. Is that something that particularly appealed to you? I’ve heard from others that sometimes that’s where the opportunities are for a first-time CEO role.

Yes. And I think the waters were troubled, but not deeply troubled. It’s just that we had come off that COVID sugar high. Therefore, eight quarters in a row, the business had declined. So confidence was low and things were hard when I came in, but it was clear to me from the start that it wasn’t a foundational issue. The guts were good. It just needed a little bit of a refresh and a reinjection of energy and strategy, honestly. And that’s what we’ve done. So we’re now on our eighth quarter of top- and bottom-line growth.

And you just had to dive in, I guess. That’s my dad joke, because you were an accomplished diver in your youth, a seven-time Dutch national champion. Is that right?

That’s right. Back in the Stone Age.

No, it’s very impressive. Is leading a new business in a new industry like trying a new dive?

I do often say, when people ask what you learn from your sporting days, that diving especially is a sport where you have to take risks. So you’re up on a 10-meter platform, 33 feet in the air, and you have to do flips and turns, and it is really scary. And it’s always scary. It’s not just scary the first time. Every time, it’s kind of scary. So when people ask me, “Was this a scary move? Are you scared to present? Are you scared to do a podcast? Are you scared to move industries?” I’m like, “You know what? A back two-and-a-half off the 10-meter, that is scary.” Compared with that, very few other things are truly scary.

As you describe it, it sounds like you kind of have to get used to being scared when you’re jumping off that board because, as you say, it’s scary every time. Is that the same way in business, that you just have to get used to the uncertainty, the instability, whatever’s going to happen next?

Yes, I think that’s a great insight. Some people say it’s not a marathon, or it’s a series of sprints, or something. But yes, it’s a series of new situations where you don’t always know what to expect that can be a little scary. And I think you have to find a way to enjoy that to keep going.

Not to overdo this analogy, but just as you’re implementing your new plans at Logitech, which by all indications are working, you’re hit with a new challenge when the The President tariffs come down. It’s like being scared on the next dive, I guess. Something like 40% of your products for the U.S. market were made in China. Was there a moment you remember hearing about tariffs where you were like, “Oh no, not this”?

It was certainly a tough day, Liberation Day, April 1, 2025. For almost everyone in our industry, we produce our products around the world, but not necessarily in the United States, and the United States is a big market for us. But we quickly figured out that we actually were in a position of competitive strength. Only 30% of our business is in the United States. Seventy percent of our business is not, so it was not affected by tariffs. We have a very diverse manufacturing footprint, and this is all my predecessor’s work. I take zero credit for that. Yes, 40% came from China, but we also make in five other countries. So we were able to move things around, and by the end of the calendar year, only 10% of our products for the U.S. came from China. We have a strong brand, which gives you loyalty and gives you some pricing power, and we needed that.

You raised prices pretty quickly, by around 10%.

And I don’t like raising prices, but in this case, it absolutely was the responsible thing to do. And if you decide you’re going to do it, I always think it’s better to rip the Band-Aid off right away. So we did it very quickly. I think that gave us the advantage that by the time the holiday season came around, in October and November, we were through the pricing pain, and that was really important. Taking pricing, especially in consumer markets, just takes a while. You have to convince customers that’s the right thing to do and get it reflected on the shelf. Again, I thought that was a competitive advantage.

So when the bigger bulk of your consumer revenue was coming through, people had sort of accepted it by then.

Exactly.

How much do you worry about new The President-related disruptions? At the World Economic Forum last month, I saw The President said that the former Swiss president rubbed him the wrong way as an explanation for tariffs on Switzerland, which is where Logitech is registered, right?

I don’t lose a lot of sleep over it. It’s a really dynamic world. I often say to my team, “Today is the slowest day of the rest of your lives.” And there is a lot happening, not just in the U.S. and with the U.S. administration. There’s a lot happening around the world. So we roll with the punches. Of course, we do risk assessments, and we think through what could happen and how we mitigate that. Manufacturing diversification is a critical part of that. It just makes us more resilient when we don’t manufacture in one place. So we absolutely look at what might happen around the world and how we mitigate that, but we can’t lose sleep over that every day because then we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.

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