Microsoft has named Judson Althoff as CEO of its commercial business, a newly created role designed to simply and improve operations and accelerate growth in the era of AI. Althoff, previously Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, will now oversee Microsoft’s key commercial functions, including sales, marketing, and operations.
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Focus on Integrated Commercial Leadership
In an internal memo, CEO Satya Nadella announced the appointment as part of Microsoft’s broader effort to “reinvent itself” during what he described as a “tectonic AI platform shift.” Althoff will lead a new commercial leadership team that unites executives from engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance. The goal is to strengthen Microsoft’s position as the preferred partner for enterprise AI transformation.
Expanded Responsibilities, Clear Boundaries
Althoff brings nine years of experience leading Microsoft’s global sales organization and played a central role in building the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) division. In his new role, he takes responsibility for all commercial-facing teams that drive revenue from enterprise customers. He will not oversee engineering teams responsible for product development.
Continued Technical Focus for Nadella
The reorganization will allow Nadella to concentrate on Microsoft’s most ambitious technical initiatives. He emphasized his intent to focus on datacenter expansion, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation. “This isn’t just evolution, it’s reinvention—for each of us professionally and for Microsoft,” Nadella wrote.
CEO Titles Multiply Across Microsoft’s Major Units
Microsoft has increasingly assigned CEO titles to leaders of its largest business segments. Phil Spencer serves as CEO of Microsoft Gaming, and Mustafa Suleyman leads Microsoft AI as CEO. The company also maintained CEO roles following its acquisitions of LinkedIn and GitHub, though the GitHub CEO position was eliminated after Thomas Dohmke’s departure earlier this year.
This latest move reinforces Microsoft’s strategy of empowering business-unit leaders while allowing Nadella to maintain his role as overall CEO with a sharpened focus on technical leadership.
Here’s Nadella’s text in full, as per The Verge:
We are in the midst of a tectonic AI platform shift, one that requires us to both manage and grow our at-scale commercial business today, while building the new frontier and executing flawlessly across both.
History shows that general purpose technologies like AI drive step changes in productivity and GDP growth, and we have a unique opportunity to help our customers and the world realize this promise.
Our success depends on enabling commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to change the frontier of how they operate. To accelerate this, we will increasingly need to bring together sales, marketing, operations, and engineering to drive growth and strengthen our position as the partner of choice for AI transformation.
With this context, I have asked Judson Althoff to take on an expanded role as CEO of our commercial business. Over the past nine years, Judson has led our global sales organization and was the architect behind designing and building Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) into what it is today: the “number one seed” in the industry and our company’s most important growth engine.
Takeshi Numoto and his marketing team will join this new organization, with Takeshi reporting directly to Judson as CMO, while also continuing to report directly to me on all-up business models, planning, consumer marketing, and corporate brand and communications.
Our operations organization will also move to report to Judson. By bringing operations into the commercial business, we can tighten the feedback loop between what customers need and how we deliver and support them. Carolina Dybeck Happe will continue to report to me, as she works on our overall company transformation and continues to closely partner with Judson.
Additionally, Judson will lead a new commercial leadership team that brings together leaders from engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance to drive our product strategy and governance, GTM readiness, and sales motions with shared accountability for the rigor and executional excellence our customers expect.
This will also allow our engineering leaders and me to be laser focused on our highest ambition technical work—across our datacenter buildout, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation—to lead with intensity and pace in this generational platform shift. Each one of us needs to be at our very best in terms of rapidly learning new skills, adopting new ways to work, and staying close to the metal to drive innovation across the entire stack!!
This isn’t just evolution, it’s reinvention, for each of us professionally and for Microsoft.
Satya
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