Microsoft promotes sales leaders as company pursues AI growth

Investors have been wondering how much Microsoft and other longstanding software companies can grow as corporate workers build new applications using generative artificial intelligence models. Microsoft shares have slipped 15% so far this year, trailing all other Magnificent Seven technology stocks.

Last week Microsoft issued Azure cloud growth that came in below some projections. Executives said they want to allocate more computing resources to research and development teams and to its AI products such as the Microsoft 365 Copilot productivity software add-on and the GitHub Copilot coding assistant, while still meeting Azure client demand.

“Judson expanded the remits of his leadership team to free up more time to focus on Microsoft’s commercial product strategy and to keep the feedback loop between customers and product decisions as small as possible,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “This feedback loop is critical right now because AI is being adopted at extraordinary speed, and our customers expect these capabilities to come to life in their business faster than ever before.”

Deb Cupp, chief revenue officer leading Microsoft’s global enterprise sales business, is the company’s latest executive vice president, Althoff said in an memo. In recent years, Cupp went from president of Microsoft’s U.S. business to president for North America and then to president of the Americas.

Nick Parker, chief business officer of worldwide sales and solutions, is becoming an executive vice president as well. He’s been at the company since 2000.

Ralph Haupter becomes executive vice president and chief revenue officer for small and medium enterprises and channel. Haupter came to Microsoft from IBM in 2005, and he spent four years as CEO and chairman of the Windows and Office company’s greater China business.

Mala Anand, a former SAP executive 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 executive vice president before stepping up as Microsoft’s CEO since 2014, has concentrated on innovation with Althoff taking on more responsibility. At a software developer event in India in December, he showed off an app he built to research topics using a slew 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 may just end it in a command line.”

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