Microsoft's engineering and commercial organization under Satya Nadella had a relatively stable structure entering 2024. The direct reports to Nadella that matter for this chronology:
AI was treated as a capability flowing through Azure (infrastructure) and Experiences + Devices (productivity products) rather than as a standalone product division.
Satya Nadella (CEO) ├── Scott Guthrie (Cloud + AI) │ └── Eric Boyd (Azure AI Platform) ├── Rajesh Jha (Experiences + Devices) ├── Kevin Scott (CTO, AI strategy) ├── Charlie Bell (Security) ├── Judson Althoff (Commercial/Sales) ├── Phil Spencer (Gaming CEO) ├── Thomas Dohmke (GitHub CEO) ├── Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn CEO) └── Amy Hood (CFO)
Nadella hired Mustafa Suleyman from Inflection AI and created a new division called Microsoft AI. Suleyman became EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI, reporting directly to Nadella. Karén Simonyan joined as Chief Scientist under Suleyman. Several other Inflection team members also moved to Microsoft.
The new Microsoft AI division absorbed organizations that had been scattered across the company:
This created a parallel AI organization alongside the existing Guthrie organization. Guthrie continued to run Azure AI Platform (infrastructure, Azure OpenAI Service, model hosting). Suleyman ran Microsoft AI (consumer-facing Copilot products and Bing). They were peers, both reporting to Nadella.
Consumer Copilot moved under Suleyman. M365 Copilot (the version inside Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams) remained under Jha in Experiences + Devices.
Mikhail Parakhin, who had been running Copilot, Bing, Edge, and the Windows software side under Rajesh Jha prior to this reorg, was told to move his Copilot/Bing/Edge team to report to Suleyman. Within a week of the announcement, Parakhin declined the effective demotion and announced he would explore new roles.
Pavan Davuluri — already in charge of Surface and devices since Panos Panay's departure in September 2023 — had Windows added to his portfolio, taking on the combined Windows + Devices team under Jha.
Satya Nadella (CEO) ├── Scott Guthrie (Cloud + AI) │ └── Eric Boyd (Azure AI Platform) ├── Rajesh Jha (Experiences + Devices) │ └── M365 Copilot ├── Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI) ← NEW │ ├── Consumer Copilot │ ├── Bing │ └── Edge ├── Kevin Scott (CTO) ├── Charlie Bell (Security) ├── Judson Althoff (Commercial) ├── Phil Spencer (Gaming CEO) ├── Thomas Dohmke (GitHub CEO) └── Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn CEO)
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, March 19, 2024
Jay Parikh, former global head of engineering at Meta (Facebook) and former CEO of the cybersecurity startup Lacework, joined Microsoft as EVP reporting directly to Nadella. At the time of joining he did not have a specific division. He was hired as a senior engineering leader with a division to be built around him.
Parikh was an outsider with no prior Microsoft tenure.
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, October 31, 2024
Nadella announced the creation of CoreAI — Platform and Tools, a new engineering division led by Jay Parikh. The stated mission was to build "the end-to-end Copilot and AI stack for both our first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI apps and agents."
Nadella's internal memo included the phrase "thirty years of change is being compressed into three years."
CoreAI took pieces from multiple existing organizations:
The initial direct reports to Parikh in CoreAI were named from day one: Eric Boyd (CVP, AI Platform), Jason Taylor (Deputy CTO, AI Infrastructure), Julia Liuson (President, Developer Division), and Tim Bozarth (CVP, Developer Infrastructure). Boyd's Azure AI Platform team of approximately 1,500 engineers moved from Guthrie's Cloud + AI organization into CoreAI as part of this formation. Guthrie continued running the remainder of Cloud + AI including Azure infrastructure.
Satya Nadella (CEO) ├── Scott Guthrie (Cloud + AI) ← reduced scope │ └── Azure infrastructure, remaining Cloud + AI ├── Jay Parikh (CoreAI - Platform and Tools) ← NEW │ ├── Eric Boyd (Azure AI Platform, ~1,500 engineers) │ ├── Jason Taylor (Deputy CTO, AI Infrastructure) │ ├── Julia Liuson (President, Developer Division) │ └── Tim Bozarth (CVP, Developer Infrastructure) ├── Rajesh Jha (Experiences + Devices) ├── Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI) ├── Kevin Scott (CTO) ├── Charlie Bell (Security) ├── Judson Althoff (Commercial) ├── Phil Spencer (Gaming CEO) ├── Thomas Dohmke (GitHub CEO) └── Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn CEO)
Reference: GeekWire, January 13, 2025; CNBC, January 13, 2025
Chris Young, EVP of Business Development, Strategy, and Ventures, informed Microsoft of his decision to resign effective immediately. Per SEC 8-K filing. He remained as an employee to provide transition support through end of March 2025. Young was one of the most senior M&A and strategy executives at the company.
Reference: SEC 8-K Filing, January 22, 2025
Microsoft announced the formation of a research-focused unit inside the Microsoft AI division called the Advanced Planning Unit (APU), reporting directly to Suleyman. Suleyman announced the unit through a series of posts on X. The unit was tasked with analyzing and anticipating AI's societal, economic, and workplace implications.
APU recruited from economics, psychology, quantum computing, nuclear research, and semiconductor technology backgrounds. The unit operates across Microsoft AI offices in Silicon Valley and London.
Reference: TechCrunch, January 31, 2025; BankInfoSecurity, February 3, 2025
Amy Coleman was named EVP and Chief People Officer, succeeding Kathleen Hogan, who had held the role for the past decade. Hogan moved to a new role as EVP, Office of Strategy and Transformation, reporting to Nadella. Coleman, a 25-year Microsoft veteran most recently CVP for Human Resources and Corporate Functions, joined the senior leadership team reporting to Nadella.
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, March 19, 2025; CNBC, March 19, 2025
Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, announced he would step down at end of 2025 to "become a founder again." Microsoft simultaneously announced that GitHub's platform would be folded into the CoreAI division under Jay Parikh.
The GitHub CEO title was retired rather than replaced. GitHub lost its status as an independent subsidiary and became a product organization inside CoreAI.
Jay Parikh (CoreAI - Platform and Tools) ├── Developer tools ├── AI platform components ├── Eric Boyd (Azure AI Platform) └── GitHub ← ABSORBED, no CEO title retained
Reference: GitHub Blog (Dohmke departure announcement); Computerworld, October 2025
Carlos A. Rodriguez, member of the Microsoft Board of Directors, informed the company of his decision not to stand for re-election at the 2025 annual shareholder meeting. He had served as Chair of the Compensation Committee and member of the Audit Committee. Stated "personal reasons." Per SEC 8-K filing.
Reference: SEC 8-K Filing, September 24, 2025
Judson Althoff was promoted from EVP and Chief Commercial Officer to CEO of Microsoft's commercial business. The reorganization consolidated sales, marketing, operations, and engineering under one roof.
Nadella's internal memo at the time: "We are in the midst of a tectonic AI platform shift, one that requires us to both manage and grow our at-scale commercial business today, while building the new frontier and executing flawlessly across both."
The CEO title now applied to multiple Microsoft division leaders: Gaming (Spencer), Microsoft AI (Suleyman), LinkedIn (Roslansky), GitHub (Dohmke, pending departure), and Commercial (Althoff).
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, October 1, 2025; Computerworld, October 1, 2025
Suleyman announced the formation of the MAI Superintelligence Team inside Microsoft AI. The team's mandate: build Microsoft's own proprietary foundation models, reducing dependence on OpenAI at the model layer. Microsoft framed the work as pursuing "humanist superintelligence" (HSI) — advanced AI designed to remain controllable, aligned, and in service of humanity.
Suleyman stated he would lead the team directly. Initial members included Microsoft AI Chief Scientist Karén Simonyan, alongside researchers Microsoft had already hired from Google DeepMind, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI CEO)
├── Consumer Copilot (product shipping)
├── Bing
├── Edge
├── Advanced Planning Unit
└── MAI Superintelligence Team ← NEW
└── Foundation model research
Reference: CNBC, November 6, 2025; Microsoft AI, MAI Superintelligence
Nadella announced via internal memo that Charlie Bell, EVP of Microsoft Security since 2021, would move to a new individual contributor role focused on engineering quality, continuing to report to Nadella. Nadella's memo: "Charlie and I have been planning this transition for some time, given his desire to move from being an org leader to being an IC engineer." In his new role, Bell leads Microsoft's Quality Excellence Initiative and partners closely with Scott Guthrie and Mala Anand.
Hayete Gallot rejoined Microsoft as EVP of Security, reporting to Nadella, replacing Bell atop the Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management organization. Gallot joined from Google Cloud, where she had served as President of Customer Experience since 2024. Prior to Google, she spent more than 15 years at Microsoft in senior leadership roles across engineering and sales, including work on Windows, Office, and commercial solution areas go-to-market.
Ales Holecek, previously CTO of the Experiences + Devices Group, was named Chief Architect for Security, reporting to Gallot. This moved a senior technical leader out of the E+D organization approximately five weeks before the E+D division was dissolved on March 12, 2026.
Separately, Kelly Bissell, Corporate Vice President for Fraud and Abuse, departed Microsoft the same week after more than four years at the company. Bissell had joined from Accenture in January 2022.
Reference: GeekWire, February 4, 2026; CNBC, February 4, 2026; Microsoft Official Blog, February 4, 2026
Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, announced retirement after 38 years at Microsoft, effective February 23, 2026. Nadella's memo revealed succession had been planned for about a year, with Spencer telling Nadella the prior fall that he was ready to step back.
Sarah Bond, Xbox president and the widely expected successor to Spencer, also departed alongside Spencer.
Asha Sharma, former president of CoreAI under Jay Parikh, became EVP and CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Sharma had previously been an executive at Instacart and Meta. Her AI background was explicitly cited as the reason for the appointment.
Matt Booty, longtime Microsoft gaming executive, was promoted to EVP and Chief Content Officer reporting to Sharma.
Sharma's move from CoreAI to Gaming meant CoreAI lost one of its senior leaders less than 14 months after the division was formed.
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, February 20, 2026; GeekWire, February 20, 2026; CNBC, February 20, 2026
Rajesh Jha, EVP of Experiences + Devices, announced retirement after 35+ years at Microsoft. Transition out on July 1, 2026, followed by an advisory role. Jha had joined Microsoft in 1990.
Microsoft did not replace Jha with a single EVP. Instead, four senior leaders from the Experiences + Devices organization were named as EVP direct reports to Nadella:
In the same announcement, three additional leaders from the E+D organization received title elevations (they continued reporting into the new four-EVP structure rather than becoming new direct reports to Nadella):
The Experiences + Devices division was dissolved as a unified organization. Jha's memo noted that the full cascade of details would be finalized between March and June, ready for the start of fiscal year 2027.
Satya Nadella (CEO) ├── Scott Guthrie (Cloud + AI) ├── Jay Parikh (CoreAI) ├── Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI CEO) ├── Kevin Scott (CTO) ├── Hayete Gallot (Security) ├── Charlie Bell (IC, Quality Excellence) ├── Judson Althoff (Commercial CEO) ├── Asha Sharma (Gaming CEO) ├── Perry Clarke ← NEW direct report (M365 Core) ├── Charles Lamanna ← NEW direct report (Business/Industry Copilot) ├── Pavan Davuluri ← NEW direct report (Windows and Surface) ├── Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn CEO, expanded to Office/M365 Copilot) └── Amy Hood (CFO)
Nadella's direct reports expanded from roughly 10 in early 2024 to approximately 14 after this restructuring, counting the four new E+D EVPs, the new Gaming CEO (Sharma), the earlier additions of Suleyman and Parikh, and Bell's continued direct-report status in his new IC role.
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, March 12, 2026; CNBC, March 12, 2026
Five days after the Jha retirement announcement, Microsoft reorganized Microsoft AI. Jacob Andreou, a former Snap executive who had been CVP of Product and Growth at Microsoft AI, was promoted to EVP, Copilot, with responsibility for the Copilot experience across consumer and commercial — spanning design, product, growth, and engineering. Andreou reports directly to Nadella, with a dotted line back to Suleyman.
Suleyman narrowed his operational focus to foundation model development. His public statement: "The next phase of this plan is to restructure our organization to enable me to focus all my energy on our Superintelligence efforts and be able to deliver world-class models for Microsoft over the next five years." Suleyman continued as CEO of Microsoft AI and said he would stay directly involved in much of the day-to-day operation of the broader Microsoft AI group, including Bing.
A new Copilot Leadership Team was established to coordinate across the unified org, including Andreou, Suleyman, Charles Lamanna, Perry Clarke, and Ryan Roslansky.
Satya Nadella (CEO)
├── Mustafa Suleyman (EVP, CEO Microsoft AI)
│ ├── MAI Superintelligence team (primary focus)
│ ├── Bing
│ ├── Edge
│ └── Advanced Planning Unit
└── Jacob Andreou (EVP, Copilot) ← NEW, reports to Nadella
├── Consumer Copilot
└── Commercial/M365 Copilot
(dotted line to Suleyman)
Consumer and commercial Copilot engineering were consolidated under Andreou. Prior to this move, M365 Copilot had been under Jha's Experiences + Devices. With Jha retiring and Andreou taking over all Copilot engineering, the organizational boundaries between consumer and commercial Copilot collapsed.
Reference: Microsoft Official Blog, March 17, 2026; CNBC, March 17, 2026; GeekWire, March 17, 2026
Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft's Chief Diversity Officer, left the company to take a new role as Chief People Officer at another organization.
She was replaced by Leslie Lawson Sims under a new title: VP of People & Culture. The title change from Chief Diversity Officer to VP of People & Culture represented a structural repositioning of the function.
Reference: CNBC, March 2026; Windows Central, March 2026
Microsoft made three MAI foundation models broadly available on Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground:
These were the first major model releases from the MAI Superintelligence team since its formation in November 2025, and were positioned as part of Microsoft's broader diversification away from exclusive OpenAI model dependence.
Reference: Microsoft AI Blog, April 2, 2026; GeekWire, April 2, 2026; TechCrunch, April 2, 2026
Eric Boyd left Microsoft after nearly 17 years at the company. GeekWire first reported his departure. Boyd had led Microsoft's Azure AI Platform team for over 11 years, most recently reporting to Jay Parikh in CoreAI. His team was approximately 1,500 engineers responsible for building and operating Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, and the infrastructure powering Microsoft's first-party Copilot applications.
On April 7, 2026, Boyd announced he had joined Anthropic as head of infrastructure, joining the team led by Anthropic CTO Rahul Patil. His LinkedIn post: "I've been privileged to have a front row seat to the explosion of LLMs, and the team at Anthropic is truly special. The combination of the absolute leading models with a culture that is committed to their mission is inspiring and I can't wait to lean in to help."
Boyd's statement in the same post: "AI is accelerating at an incredible pace, and the impact of Claude Code in the last 6 months, and particularly the last 2 months, just shows the power of what is possible."
Boyd joined Microsoft in 2009 from Mochi Media, an ads startup acquired by Shanda Games, where he had served as VP of engineering. Before that, he spent a decade at Yahoo as VP of platform engineering. At Microsoft he led Bing Ads, became president of the AI Platform in 2015, and was tapped by Nadella in 2018 to lead the Azure AI team. He oversaw the development of Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services, and the integration of OpenAI's models into Azure AI services during his tenure.
Reference: Bloomberg, April 7, 2026; GeekWire, April 7, 2026; Thurrott, April 2026
Satya Nadella (CEO) │ ├── Scott Guthrie (EVP, Cloud + AI) │ └── Azure infrastructure and remaining Cloud + AI scope │ ├── Jay Parikh (EVP, CoreAI - Platform and Tools) │ ├── Developer tools │ ├── Azure AI Platform (~1,500 engineers, Boyd successor TBD) │ ├── GitHub (absorbed, no CEO title) │ └── AI platform and tools infrastructure │ ├── Mustafa Suleyman (EVP, CEO of Microsoft AI) │ ├── MAI Superintelligence team (primary focus) │ ├── Bing │ ├── Edge │ └── Advanced Planning Unit │ ├── Jacob Andreou (EVP, Copilot) │ ├── Consumer Copilot │ └── Commercial/M365 Copilot │ (dotted line to Suleyman) │ ├── Kevin Scott (CTO and EVP of AI) │ └── AI strategy, OpenAI partnership management │ ├── Hayete Gallot (EVP, Security) │ └── Ales Holecek (Chief Architect for Security) │ ├── Charlie Bell (IC, Quality Excellence Initiative) │ ├── Judson Althoff (CEO, Commercial Business) │ ├── Asha Sharma (CEO, Gaming) │ ├── Ryan Roslansky (CEO, LinkedIn, + Office/M365 Copilot scope) │ ├── Perry Clarke (EVP, President Microsoft 365 Core) │ ├── Charles Lamanna (EVP, President Business/Industry Copilot) │ ├── Pavan Davuluri (EVP, Windows and Surface) │ └── Amy Hood (CFO)
Approximately 15 direct reports to Nadella, compared to approximately 10 in early 2024. Additional title elevations in March 2026 (Jeff Teper to EVP, Sumit Chauhan and Kirk Koenigsbauer to President) elevated leaders who continue to report into the four new E+D EVPs rather than directly to Nadella.