News

Microsoft Appoints Pavan Davuluri To Helm Windows and Surface Division

• By Chris Paoli
• March 26, 2024

In a strategic move, Microsoft has announced the appointment of seasoned insider Pavan Davuluri as the head of its newly combined Windows and Surface division.

The exec change was announced in an internal memo.  Davuluri, who has been with the company since 2001 and has recently held a corporate vice president role  in the Windows + Devices team, will be stepping into the role that has been vacant since longtime Microsoft chief Panos Panay left the company for Amazon last year. This comes less than six months after Microsoft announced that Davuluri would be leading the company's chip engineering goals.

What's noteworthy is that Microsoft is once again reshuffling its teams, bringing both the Windows and Surface groups under one banner. "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," wrote Rajesh Jha, Microsoft's technology chief, in the internal memo. "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 news comes a week after Microsoft announced that DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman would be heading the new consumer-focused Microsoft AI team. In wake of that, Microsoft also announced in the same internal memo that Mikhail Parakhin, who has led the company's Bing search engine and advertising efforts, will be departing the company.

"Mikhail Parakhin has decided to explore new roles," wrote Jha. "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."

Parakhin will stay on and report to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott during the transitional phase.

Further, the internal memo announced that the Web Experience team will be absorbed into Suleyman's Microsoft AI group, and will help drive the company's main focus on AI.
"We are excited for this team to help Microsoft AI achieve its bold ambition to build world-class consumer AI products," said Jha. "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."