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Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business
- By Ammaarah Mohamed
- October 01, 2025
Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.
Althoff, who previously led Microsoft's global sales business while building out the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) program over the last nine years, will now focus on positioning Microsoft as businesses' preferred partner for AI transformation.
As Nadella said in a memo to staff announcing Althoff's promotion, growing Microsoft's AI portfolio will require collaboration between sales, marketing, operations and engineering. With this goal in mind, Althoff will lead a new commercial team to drive product strategy, including the marketing team led by now-CMO Takeshi Numoto and the operations team led by Carolina Dybeck Happe.
Nadella, meanwhile, says he -- alongside Microsoft engineers -- will be "laser focused on our highest ambition technical work -- across our datacenter buildout, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation."
Althoff's promotion comes quickly on the heels of a reorg affecting Microsoft's various Windows engineering teams, which are now back to operating under one umbrella. According to reporting this week by The Verge, Windows president Pavan Davuluri now oversees "the teams working on Windows client and server." The Windows engineering teams had previously been more distributed, following a 2018 reorg that split them between a new Experiences & Devices group and a Cloud + AI Platform group.
About the Author
Ammaarah Mohamed ([email protected]) is the editorial assistant of the Converge360 Enterprise Technology group.