The Exec Trying to Make Microsoft Smarter About AI
The Exec Trying to Make Microsoft Smarter About AI
The Architect of Microsoft’s Vaunted Cloud Bundle Turns His Gaze to AI
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The Exec Trying to Make Microsoft Smarter About AI
The Architect of Microsoft’s Vaunted Cloud Bundle Turns His Gaze to AI
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The Exec Trying to Make Microsoft Smarter About AI
Scott—who sports a beard that’s more reminiscent of Colonel Sanders than a tech executive—has become the face of Microsoft’s AI strategy. Scott joined the tech giant seven years ago as part of an acquisition and has bucked Microsoft’s culture to promote a $10 billion partnership with OpenAI.
Scott said his OpenAI-or-bust strategy was the only way the company could have catapulted itself ahead. His approach has rankled some employees, especially within Microsoft’s research division, who found their own AI projects pushed aside and their resources curtailed. Many have left the company out of frustration. “It’s just been clear as day that you have to pick the things that you think are going to be successful and give those things the resources to be successful every day,” Scott, 52, said in an interview.
Within Microsoft, an agreement with Chief Executive Satya Nadella makes him one of the few top leaders allowed to work from the San Francisco Bay Area, rather than Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters. In his 2020 book, “Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley―Making AI Serve Us All,” Scott described traveling back to his hometown, seeing the long-abandoned fields and factories and imagining how AI could revitalize rural America.
Scott proved to be particularly sharp when he was asked to determine whether a technical problem was surmountable. If he said it was, Weiner was confident he’d be right. “His track record with regard to that kind of assessment was essentially 100%,” Weiner said. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, now a Microsoft director, recalled that a colleague once pulled Scott aside at a corporate event and asked him to refrain from using four-letter words in his presentation; he complied….
By Tom Dotan of The Wall Street Journal (click to read in full on mobile only)
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The Architect of Microsoft’s Vaunted Cloud Bundle Turns His Gaze to AI
Takeshi Numoto has been one of Microsoft’s most influential behind-the-scenes executives in the past 20 years, helping turn its cloud business into a huge success. Now he faces the challenge of persuading customers to pay for AI tools. Numoto rarely spoke publicly at Microsoft conferences or product rollouts, and his face is unfamiliar to some of the company’s largest customers.
But behind the scenes, Numoto has been one of Microsoft’s most influential leaders. Even before his promotion, his ambit has been far wider than that of a typical CMO. One of CEO Satya Nadella’s closest advisers, Numoto is revered within the company for his knack for growing revenue. He is credited with having figured out how to raise prices for Microsoft’s packages of software without alienating customers. His strategy turned Microsoft’s cloud business into an unqualified success, lifting cloud revenue to $140 billion in the year to June 2023 from $8 billion in 2015.
In doing so, Microsoft escaped the fate of other aging enterprise tech pioneers like IBM or Cisco by convincing millions of businesses to keep spending more money on its products and services, from videoconferencing apps to cybersecurity software, and it also avoided losing customers to younger enterprise software firms. Numoto’s next challenge may be just as pivotal: He has to persuade customers to spend even more money as they start using Microsoft’s artificial intelligence–powered versions of Office and other services….
Enjoy! SBalley Team