Microsoft names CEO to run commercial business, Nadella to focus on tech

Audio By Carbonatix

Enlarge

(Reuters) -Microsoft Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff will take on an expanded role as CEO of commercial business, freeing up company chief Satya Nadella to focus more on the technical side of the business in the tech giant’s quest to dominate the AI race.

Althoff will lead what Microsoft CEO Nadella called a new organization, which will combine sales, marketing and operations.

Nadella said the reorganization would help him and other engineering leaders to be “laser focused on our highest ambition technical work – across our datacenter buildout, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation,” in a blog post on Wednesday.

Althoff will also be the chief of a new commercial leadership team that includes leaders from engineering, sales, marketing, operations and finance.

“We are in the midst of a tectonic AI platform shift, one that requires us to both manage and grow our at-scale commercial business today, while building the new frontier and executing flawlessly across both,” Nadella said.

In 2021, Microsoft brought together its global sales and marketing organization and worldwide commercial business into a single unified organization, helmed by Althoff, who joined the company in 2013 as president of Microsoft North America.

Microsoft last month said it is combining the separate marketplaces for its AI tools aimed at businesses into one offering called “Microsoft Marketplace.”

It previously offered tools for software developers, who use its Azure cloud computing service, on one marketplace, and applications and so-called “agents” — AI tools designed to carry out tasks on behalf of human users within applications — on another.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)