The company announced Monday that it has appointed company veteran Pavan Davuluri to lead its Windows operating system and Surface devices teams. In the wake of Panos Panay's unexpected departure from Microsoft last year, its Windows and Surface groups were split among two different leadership teams. In addition to the Surface silicon and devices work, Mikhail Parakhin leads a new team focused on Windows and web experiences. Since Parakhin "Decided to Explore New Roles, "Pavan Davuluri will be responsible for both Windows and Surface.
Microsoft changed its leaders recently. Satya Nadella and the company brought in a new head for the Surface and Windows team in 2023. This role had been empty since Panos Panay moved to Amazon.
As reported, the company has chosen one of its oldest employees, Pavan Davuluri, to lead the combined team. In addition, the memo mentions Microsoft's decision to merge the Surface and Windows teams, which may allow the company to focus on bringing seamless integration between software and hardware.
Pavan Davuluri has been with Microsoft for over 23 years. Before that, he graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and moved to the United States for his Master's degree at the University of Maryland. During his Microsoft tenure, Pavan Davuluri started as a Reliability Component Manager in 2001, and by 2005, he was the Surface team's General Manager.
In October 2023, he became the Corporate Vice President of the Windows + Devices team, which he will now lead from the top. Being a core member of the existing Microsoft team and having spent many years seamlessly taking over and making future products and software possible.
In a transitional period, Mikhail Parakhin will report to Kevin Scott, but his future at Microsoft is uncertain, and these "New roles" may be outside Microsoft. Before taking on Microsoft Edge responsibilities and broader Windows engineering responsibilities, Parakhin worked closely with Bing Chat.
A new AI team headed by former Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google DeepMind, has joined Microsoft as the new CEO of a new AI team. Microsoft also hired a few Inflection AI employees, including Karén Simonyan, co-founder of Inflection AI. Due to this, Inflection's staff is joining Microsoft AI in what is being considered a talent acquisition that avoids direct regulatory scrutiny.
It's clear that these new leaders are going to have to navigate some interesting overlap areas with the Microsoft AI team, Jha says. Microsoft AI now manages Edge, one of the most important browsers for Windows users.
