Microsoft has appointed Pavan Davuluri as the new head of the Windows and Surface division. After Panos Panay unexpectedly moved to Amazon last year, Microsoft split the Windows and Surface groups under the leadership of two different leaders.
Davuluri took over the work on chips and Surface devices, while Mikhail Parakhin led a new team focused on Windows and web services. Now the Windows and Surface directions are again merged and will report to Davuluri, as Parakhin has "decided to explore new roles."
Journalists from The Verge received an internal memo from Microsoft describing the new organization of the Windows direction. Microsoft is reuniting the Windows and devices teams.
"This will allow us to take a holistic approach to creating chips, systems, experiences, and devices that span the Windows customer and cloud for this AI era," explained Rajesh Jha, head of the Microsoft Experiences and Devices division.
Currently, Pavan Davuluri leads the Microsoft Windows and Surface group, reporting directly to Rajesh Jha. Davuluri has been with Microsoft for over 23 years and has been actively involved in the company's work with Qualcomm and AMD on creating specialized processors for Surface devices.
Mikhail Parakhin will now report to Kevin Scott during the transition period, but his future at Microsoft looks uncertain, and it is quite likely that these "new roles" will be outside the company. Parakhin worked closely on Bing Chat before taking on broader responsibilities for Windows development and changes in Microsoft Edge.
Changes in the Windows group came just days after Google DeepMind co-founder and former CEO of Inflection AI, Mustafa Suleyman, joined Microsoft as the CEO of the new Artificial Intelligence team. Microsoft also hired a group of Inflection AI employees, including co-founder Karen Simonyan, who is now the chief scientist of Microsoft AI. As a result, most Inflection employees are joining Microsoft AI. This seems like talent acquisition aimed at avoiding direct regulatory control.
Currently, Suleyman is the CEO of the new Microsoft AI team, which will focus on developing consumer-oriented AI products, such as Copilot, Bing, and Edge. Suleyman reports directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Jha says that the Windows team "will closely collaborate with the Microsoft AI team on artificial intelligence, chips, and experiences," but there will be several interesting areas of potential overlap for these new leaders to focus on.
Source: The Verge
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