Microsoft (MS) has launched an organizational shake-up, including scrapping its existing senior executive structure, to maintain market leadership in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The company has shifted to a fast, efficient decision-making system to strengthen its AI competitiveness.
U.S. business outlet Business Insider reported this on the 22nd, local time, after obtaining internal MS documents. Satya Nadella, MS chief executive officer (CEO), dissolved the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), a gathering of leaders who each ran vast organizations and reported directly to the CEO. Nadella is said to have created small, field-centered horizontal teams to replace the dissolved SLT.
First, Nadella formed a corporations leadership team, a companywide management body of five people: himself; President Brad Smith; Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Amy Hood; Chief People Officer (CPO) Amy Coleman; and Commercial institutional sector CEO Judson Althoff. Meeting at least once a week, this team, unlike the SLT that gathered the heads of giant business units, is a consultative body focused only on company operations and governance.
Nadella is also running an engineering leadership group made up of 35 people, including engineering and product Heads of Team. Without passing through complex layers, this group enables engineers, researchers, developers, and designers to collaborate directly and has adopted an operating structure similar to a startup.
Along with this reorganization, a generational shift in the executive ranks and a reshuffling of responsibilities are underway. Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president with 35 years of experience who has served as MS consumer institutional sector chief marketing officer (CMO) since 2023, decided to leave the company after a reduction in duties. Rajesh Jha, a senior vice president who oversaw some product institutional sectors, also plans to retire in July to coincide with the start of MS's new fiscal year. Mustafa Suleyman, recruited from DeepMind to oversee the AI institutional sector that Nadella created in 2024, is currently focused on the Superintelligence organization, which has about 650 employees.