announced Monday that it has tapped company veteran Pavan Davuluri to lead its Windows operating system and Surface teams.
Davuluri, who joined Microsoft in 2001 and was vice president of the company for almost three years, takes on additional responsibilities after Panos Panay relocated last fall.
Windows remains critical to Microsoft. Its customers take their dependence on Windows into account when deciding which cloud infrastructure to use for IT projects. That’s true even as Microsoft and other public companies adjust their stance to capitalize on interest in generative AI.
Davuluri’s promotion comes a week after Microsoft announced it was hiring former DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to head a new organization called Microsoft AI. Mikhail Parakhin, general manager of advertising and internet services, and his unit, which includes people working on the Bing search engine and the Edge browser, will be part of Microsoft AI, the company said.
Parakhin will now look at other roles and will report to Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, executive Rajesh Jha wrote in a note previously published by Edge.
Last week, Microsoft unveiled its first Surface PCs with a Copilot button for quick access to a chatbot on Windows. “I am incredibly proud of the team for the work they have done to bring these devices and experiences to life for our customers,” Davuluri said in a statement post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
I want to share an update for the Windows and Web Experiences (WWE) team following last week’s announcement and creation of the Microsoft AI organization.
Mikhail Parakhin decided to explore new roles. Satya and I are grateful for Mikhail’s contributions and leadership and want to thank him for all he has done to help Microsoft lead in the new wave of artificial intelligence. He will report to Kevin Scott, supporting the transition to WWE.
As part of this change, we are combining the Windows Experiences and Windows + Devices teams to form the core of the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division. This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences and devices spanning the Windows client and the cloud for the AI era. Pavan Davuluri will lead this team and will continue to report to me. Shilpa Ranganathan and Jeff Johnson and their teams will report directly to Pavan. The Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon and experiences.
The web experience team will report to Mustafa in the new Microsoft AI organization.
Jordi Ribas will lead search, maps and platforms, with Andrey Proskurin, Fatima Kardar and Nick Lee reporting to him.
Rukmini Iyer will head advertising, with Paul Viola and Weiqing Tu reporting to her.
Mike Davidson continues to lead the project and will work with Pavan and the team to realign the Windows design.
The roles of Ali Akgun, Kya Sainsbury-Carter, Qi Zhang and Rajesh Sundaram remain unchanged. They will join the Microsoft AI leadership team alongside Jordi, Mike and Rukmini, who will report to Mustafa.
We are excited that this team will help Microsoft AI realize its bold ambitions to create world-class consumer AI products. I look forward to working closely with Mustafa and the team as we introduce our AI products, including Copilot, to our wide range of E+D products and services.
