Microsoft said Monday it has selected company veteran Pavan Davuluri to lead its Windows operating system and Surface devices teams.
Davuluri, who joined Microsoft in 2001 and has been corporate vice president for almost three years, is taking on additional responsibilities after Panos Panay decamped to Amazon last fall.
Windows remains critical to Microsoft. Its clients take into consideration their reliance on Windows when deciding which cloud infrastructure to use for information-technology projects. That’s true even as Microsoft and other public companies adjust their stance to capitalize on interest in generative artificial intelligence.
Davuluri’s promotion comes a week after Microsoft said it was hiring former DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a new organization called Microsoft AI. Mikhail Parakhin, CEO of advertising and web services, and his unit that includes people working on the Bing search engine and Edge browser, will be part of Microsoft AI, the company said.
Parakhin will now look at other roles and report to Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s technology chief, executive Rajesh Jha wrote in a memo, which was published earlier by The Verge.
Microsoft revealed its first Surface PCs with a Copilot button for quickly accessing the chatbot in Windows last week. “I’m incredibly proud of the team for the work they did to bring these devices and experiences to life for our customers,” Davuluri wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Read Jha’s full memo below:
I want to share an update on the Windows and Web Experiences (WWE) team following last week’s announcement and the creation of the Microsoft AI organization.
Mikhail Parakhin has 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 AI wave. He will report to Kevin Scott while supporting the WWE transition.
As part of this change, we are bringing together the Windows Experiences and Windows + Devices teams as a core part of the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division. This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences, and devices that span Windows client and cloud for this AI era. Pavan Davuluri will lead this team and 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 Experiences team will report into 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 lead Advertising with Paul Viola and Weiqing Tu reporting to her.
Mike Davidson continues to lead Design and will work with Pavan and team on how to realign Windows design.
Ali Akgun, Kya Sainsbury-Carter, Qi Zhang, and Rajesh Sundaram’s roles remain unchanged. They will join the Microsoft AI leadership team along with Jordi, Mike, and Rukmini, all reporting to Mustafa.
We are excited for this team to help Microsoft AI achieve its bold ambition to build world-class consumer AI products. And I very much look forward to closely partnering with Mustafa and the team as we bring our AI products, including Copilot, to the breadth of our E+D products and services.
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