Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s business operations, appears during an interview in San Francisco on January 27, 2017.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft announced to employees Tuesday that it was promoting four sales leaders, months after the software company became sales leader Judson Althoff CEO of its business operations.
Investors are wondering how much Microsoft and other long-standing software companies can grow as company employees create new applications using generative artificial intelligence models. Microsoft shares have fallen 15% so far this year, trailing all other Magnificent Seven tech stocks.
Last week, Microsoft released Azure cloud growth that has arrived below some projections. Executives said they want to allocate more IT resources to research and development teams and its AI products such as Microsoft 365 productivity software add-on Copilot and GitHub coding assistant Copilot, while meeting demand from Azure customers.
“Judson has expanded the remit of his leadership team to free up more time to focus on Microsoft’s product business strategy and to minimize the feedback loop between customers and product decisions,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “This feedback loop is critical today as AI is being adopted at extraordinary speed, and our customers expect these capabilities to come to life in their business faster than ever.
Deb Cupp, chief revenue officer leading Microsoft’s worldwide enterprise sales, is the company’s newest executive vice president, Althoff said in a memo. In recent years, Cupp rose from president of Microsoft’s U.S. operations to president of North America and then president of the Americas.
Nick Parker, chief commercial officer of global sales and solutions, also becomes executive vice president. He has worked at the company since 2000.
Ralph Haupter becomes executive vice president and chief revenue officer for small and medium-sized businesses and distribution networks. Haupter joined Microsoft from IBM in 2005, and he spent four years as CEO and president of the Windows and Office company’s China division.
Mala Anand, a former SAP who joined Microsoft in 2019, will be executive vice president and chief customer experience officer.
The four will continue to report to Althoff, the spokesperson said.
Satya Nadella, who was an executive vice president before becoming CEO of Microsoft since 2014, has focused on innovation, with Althoff taking on more responsibilities. At an event for software developers in India in December, he showed himself an app he created to research topics using a multitude of generative AI models.
“I started my career in a command line,” Nadella said on a podcast recorded at the Davos conference in Switzerland in January. “Who knows? I might just end it with a command line.”
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