StartupTalky

Tag: Microsoft AI

  • Microsoft Relieves CEO Satya Nadella of Key Duties to Focus on AI Strategy

    In an effort to free up CEO Satya Nadella and his engineering executives to focus on technical innovation, especially in artificial intelligence, Microsoft is reorganising its senior leadership team. Long-time sales boss Judson Althoff will now be in charge of marketing and operations.

    On October 1, Nadella sent out an email to staff members announcing Althoff’s appointment as the new CEO of Microsoft’s Commercial Business. As part of this increased role, he will now be in charge of the organisation’s operations. This new commercial business unit will include Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, Takeshi Numoto. Nadella’s email claims that the change will allow him to spend more time on product development, artificial intelligence, and the company’s substantial data centre expansion.

    Prior to joining Microsoft in 2013, Althoff served as the company’s chief commercial officer and executive vice president. He had top sales roles at Oracle and EMC before joining Microsoft. Althoff returned from an eight-week sabbatical shortly after the reorganisation.

    What Nadella’s Email Stated to the Employees?

    According to Nadella, Microsoft is going through a tectonic transition in its AI platform, which means that it must manage and expand its commercial company at scale today while simultaneously creating the next frontier and performing perfectly across both. History demonstrates that general-purpose technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) lead to significant increases in GDP and productivity. The brand has a special chance to assist its clients and the global community in fulfilling this promise.

    Microsoft’s success hinges on empowering its partners and clients in the public and private sectors to transform their operations by fusing their human capital with cutting-edge AI capabilities. In order to boost growth and solidify the company’s position as the go-to partner for AI transformation, it will need to collaborate more and more with sales, marketing, operations, and engineering. In light of this, Nadella has requested Judson Althoff to assume a more expansive position as the company’s CEO.

     Judson has been in charge of Microsoft’s worldwide sales team for the last nine years. He was also the driving force behind the creation of Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS), which is now the “number one seed” in the sector and the key growth engine for our business.

    Judson to Lead New Commercial Leadership Team

    In order to drive Microsoft’s product strategy and governance, GTM readiness, and sales motions with shared accountability for the rigour and executional excellence our customers expect, Judson will also serve as the leader of a new commercial leadership team that consists of leaders from engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance.

    This will also enable Nadella and Microsoft’s engineering leaders to lead with intensity and speed in this generational platform shift by focusing entirely on our most ambitious technical work, which spans the brand’s data centre buildout, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation.

    Quick
    Shots

    •Judson Althoff appointed as CEO of
    Microsoft’s Commercial Business, taking charge of marketing, operations, and
    global sales.

    •New commercial business unit includes
    Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, Takeshi Numoto.

    •Nadella emphasizes that AI is a
    generational platform shift and crucial for global productivity and growth.

    •The leadership change frees Nadella
    and engineering teams to focus on technical innovation, AI science, and
    product strategy.

  • Microsoft Layoffs Loom: Sales Team Braces for Impact in Coming Weeks

    According to various media reports, Microsoft is planning to lay off thousands of employees, mostly in its sales business. The layoffs are anticipated to be revealed in early July as the corporation continues to restructure in the face of significant expenditures in artificial intelligence.

    Following 6,000 layoffs in May and more than 300 more a few weeks later, the layoffs will be the Redmond-based software giant’s third significant employment decrease of the year.

    The expected summer layoffs were initially reported by Bloomberg, and according to sources, the timing aligns with the beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year in July.

    Sales Team to Face the Thunder Storm

    The upcoming cuts will disproportionately target customer-facing roles, in contrast to prior rounds that predominantly hit software engineers and product developers.

    As of June 2024, about 45,000 of Microsoft’s 228,000 employees work in the sales and marketing business. This change was hinted at by the company in April when it declared that it will outsource more software sales to small and midsized businesses to other companies.

    Although sales teams will take the brunt of the cuts, a media group reported that they won’t be the only ones affected.

    Microsoft Focusing More on AI

    The larger difficulty tech businesses face in striking a balance between AI spending and operational efficiency is reflected in Microsoft’s layoffs. This fiscal year, the business has set aside almost $80 billion for data centre expenditures, and officials have promised Wall Street that they will keep costs under control in other areas.

    At a recent internal town hall, CEO Satya Nadella told staff that the previous cuts were a “realignment” rather than a result of performance evaluations, emphasising that employees were not failing. It was about shifting into the next phase.

    Microsoft frequently announces organisational changes close to the conclusion of its fiscal year, so the timing fits a pattern. Following the Activision Blizzard takeover, the business further reduced its video game sector and let off 10,000 employees in January 2023 after hiring was prompted by the epidemic.

    According to media reports, Microsoft declined to comment on the anticipated layoffs, and the precise number of cuts is still being decided.

    Amazon CEO Echoing Similar Thoughts on Layoffs and Adaptation of AI

    Amazon has alluded to additional layoffs in the upcoming years in a recent letter to its staff. In a recent letter to his staff, Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, outlined a clear vision for the company’s future.

    According to the letter, there will be significant changes in the workforce as a result of the increased emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), including possible cutbacks in corporate employment responsibilities.

    Jassy underlined how AI is used throughout Amazon’s extensive operations, pointing to its use in Alexa, shopping features, and internal operations. He described generative AI as a “once-in-a-lifetime” technical development that may open up new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike.

  • Microsoft Taps LinkedIn Chief Roslansky to Lead Office Division!

    According to media reports, Microsoft is assigning Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, a more significant position that will involve managing Office productivity tools.

    As per reports, Roslansky, who took over LinkedIn five years ago, is going to be the executive vice president of Office. He will be answering to Rajesh Jha, the executive vice president for experiences and devices at Microsoft.

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella notified staff members of the move via email on 4 June. According to the source, Roslansky will still answer to Nadella in his capacity as CEO of LinkedIn.

    After bringing in over $17 billion in revenue in the previous year, LinkedIn, which Microsoft purchased for $27 billion in 2016, will continue to function as a subsidiary. Prior to joining LinkedIn in 2009, Roslansky was employed at Yahoo.

    Roslansky New Work Portfolio

    Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams are all part of Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity software suite, which was rebranded as Microsoft 365 in 2022.

    Apart from managing those items, Roslansky’s portfolio will also feature the M365 Copilot application, which enables users to modify documents in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In 2020, Jha’s team released the app.

    Office is one of the most recognisable product suites ever, according to Roslansky’s LinkedIn post. It has literally influenced the way the world functions. The office’s influence and reach are unparalleled. “I’m entering a brand-new, exciting period in this capacity.

    AI, connectivity, and productivity are all merging at a large scale. Professionals around the world use Office and LinkedIn on a daily basis, and I’m excited to redefine ourselves in this new environment,” he continued.

    Microsoft announced that Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president for business and industry Copilot products, and his staff will go to Jha’s division as part of the organisational shift.

    They were formerly a member of the cloud and AI team led by Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie. Lamanna oversees the Copilot Studio tool, which makes it simple to create artificial intelligence agents, and Dynamics 365 sales and customer support tools, which are competitors of Salesforce.

    Microsoft Focusing More on AI

    Nadella stated in December that AI bots may eventually replace humans as the primary means of interacting with software systems intended for usage within large corporations.

    “When was the last time any of us actually attended a business application?” he asked investors Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner during their podcast. “We hardly use them, and somebody in the organisation is sort of inputting data into it,” he said, referring to the numerous cloud software programs that the corporation pays for.

    According to Nadella, the intensity increases in the AI era, as handling all that data is now simple. Over the last ten years, the company’s Productivity and Business Processes division, which is supported by LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 subscriptions, has become more profitable.

    In the third quarter of the fiscal year, the unit’s operating margin surpassed 58%, up from 33% in the previous year. Compared to the previous year, revenue increased by 10%.

  • We Are Seeing Rapid Expansion in the Indian Market: Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI

    Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, said on his first visit to India that the business is proud that India is one of its fastest-growing markets and that it has one of its best teams globally, with offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

    Suleyman, who is well-known for having founded Inflection AI and DeepMind, two of the top artificial intelligence (AI) firms in the world, offered his thoughts on the direction of AI and how it may enhance human welfare.

    Suleyman stated during the Microsoft: Building AI Companions for India event in Bengaluru on November 6, 2024, that India has incredibly talented engineers and developers.

    Social scientists, psychologists, therapists, screenwriters, and comedians—those people who may often connect with the film or video game industries—are also becoming more and more involved with Microsoft. He noted that the company has the chance to synthesise more varied viewpoints and obtain a more comprehensive understanding of those engaged in the design and operating process.

    Microsoft 365 Copilot

    While citing Microsoft 365 Copilot as an example, Suleyman added that Microsoft 365 is a productivity tool driven by AI that enables users to do activities more effectively and efficiently. To offer real-time support, it interfaces with Microsoft 365 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Copilot offers skills and content that are pertinent to a user’s tasks by utilising Microsoft Graph data and massive language models.

     According to Suleyman, this innovative artificial intelligence application can look up and cite any query users ask by looking at their calendar or email, Excel sheets, papers, supply-chain data, or firm human resource records. This is contributing significantly to the workplace. Knowledge workers can now act on the beneficial knowledge they have access to. “I believe that many of our industries will experience significant economic benefits,” he stated.

    Speaking with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

    Suleyman spoke with S. Krishnan, the secretary of the Indian government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Suleyman responded that the internet has already made information accessible to everyone when asked about the economic benefits and growth potential that artificial intelligence (AI) can bring to India, particularly in a setting with limited capital.

    According to Suleyman, AI will now make information accessible to anyone. This knowledge is synthesised, condensed, and customised to users’ preferred methods of information acquisition and utilisation. That holds true at work just as much as it does at home.

    India’s AI Mission

    Through the India AI mission, the country hopes to build a strong AI computing infrastructure. Suleyman responded that voice is the best approach to making the technologies widely available and accessible when questioned about Microsoft’s role in fostering diversity in India. According to him, the government ought to invest in fields like translation and languages. He also underlined how crucial it is for startups and companies to have access to sizable government datasets in order to train their models and promote innovation.

    The 2024 Chemistry Nobel Prize was given to John Jumper and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind for creating the ground-breaking AI tool AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures, he said, highlighting the scientific advances made possible by AI.

    Suleyman emphasised the importance of proactive regulation in the field while talking about the risks posed by AI. According to him, it needs to be discussed openly rather than as a taboo subject. 

    Google’s Bard Vs. Microsoft’s Bing Chat: The Clash of Titans
    Both Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing Chat are performing well. Bard hasn’t been yet launched here in India; however, you can use Bing Chat.
    StartupTalkyRishi Mundra