Microsoft picks company veteran Pavan Davuluri to lead Windows and Surface

Microsoft said Monday it has selected company veteran Pavan Davuluri to lead its Windows operating system and Surface devices teams.

Davuluri, who joined Microsoft in 2001 and has been corporate vice president for almost three years, is taking on additional responsibilities after Panos Panay decamped to Amazon last fall.

Windows remains critical to Microsoft. Its clients take into consideration their reliance on Windows when deciding which cloud infrastructure to use for information-technology projects. That's true even as Microsoft and other public companies adjust their stance to capitalize on interest in generative artificial intelligence.

Davuluri's promotion comes a week after Microsoft said it was hiring former DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a new organization called Microsoft AI. Mikhail Parakhin, CEO of advertising and web services, and his unit that includes people working on the Bing search engine and Edge browser, will be part of Microsoft AI, the company said.

Parakhin will now look at other roles and report to Kevin Scott, Microsoft's technology chief, executive Rajesh Jha wrote in a memo, which was published earlier by The Verge.

Microsoft revealed its first Surface PCs with a Copilot button for quickly accessing the chatbot in Windows last week. "I'm incredibly proud of the team for the work they did to bring these devices and experiences to life for our customers," Davuluri wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Read Jha's full memo below:

I want to share an update on the Windows and Web Experiences (WWE) team following last week's announcement and the creation of the Microsoft AI organization.

Mikhail Parakhin has decided to explore new roles. Satya and I are grateful for