IIT Madras Graduate Pavan Davuluri To Head Microsoft Windows

Pavan Davuluri, an IIT Madras alumni, was appointed the new head of Microsoft Windows and Surface, making him the latest Indian to take on a leadership role at a Big Tech company much like Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella.

Mr Davuluri takes over from longtime product chief Panos Panay who left the department to join Amazon last year. Earlier, Mr Davuluri oversaw the Surface group while Mikhail Parakhin headed the Windows department. After Mr Parakhin and Mr Panay quit, he has taken over both Windows and Surface departments.

An internal memo from Rajesh Jha, Microsoft's head of experiences and devices, accessed by The Verge outlined the new hierarchy in the organisation. He said the decision will help the organisation to take a "holistic approach" to build its devices and experiences in the "AI era".

"As part of this change, we are bringing together the Windows Experiences and Windows + Devices teams as a core part of the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division. This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences, and devices that span Windows client and cloud for this AI era. Pavan Davuluri will lead this team and continue to report to me. Shilpa Ranganathan and Jeff Johnson and their teams will report directly to Pavan. The Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experiences," he said.

Mr Davuluri has worked for over 23 years at Microsoft and was involved in its work with Qualcomm and AMD to create processors for Surface.

"We are excited for this team to help Microsoft AI achieve its bold ambition to build world-class consumer AI products. And I very much look forward to closely partnering with Mustafa and the team as we bring our AI products, including Copilot, to the breadth of our E+D products and services," the memo said.

The reorganisation announcement comes days after Google DeepMind co-founder and former Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman joined Microsoft as the CEO of its new AI team.