Microsoft’s Windows and Surface teams are back under one leader

Microsoft’s Windows and Surface teams will go back under one leader after a brief split following Panos Panay’s departure.

According to The Verge, which obtained an internal memo from the company’s head of experiences and devices, Rajesh Jha, Pavan Davuluri will now oversee Windows and Surface.

Previously, Davuluri handled Surface silicon and devices, while Mikhail Parakhin led a team focused on Windows and web experiences. The Windows and Surface teams formerly operated under Panay, but the teams were split after he suddenly left Microsoft for Amazon.

Now, Parakhin has “decided to explore new roles,” leading to Davuluri taking over both teams.

Davuluri will report directly to Jha. He has worked at Microsoft for over 23 years and was involved in the company’s work with Qualcomm and AMD on custom Surface processors. Meanwhile, Parakhin will report to Microsoft’s CTO, Kevin Scott, during a transition phase. However, The Verge reports that Parakhin’s future at Microsoft looks uncertain and that he will likely head outside the company to “explore new roles.”

Jha also wrote in the memo that the Windows team will “continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experiences.” As The Verge reports, the Microsoft AI team was just bolstered with several new staff hired from Inflection AI.

That includes Google DeepMind co-founder and former Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who is now CEO of Microsoft’s AI team, Inflection co-founder Karén Simonyan, now chief scientist of Microsoft AI, and several other Inflection staff. The Microsoft AI team will handle the company’s various consumer-facing products, like Copilot and Bing, and Suleyman was set to report directly to Parakhin, but now will report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Source: The Verge