Microsoft appoints Pavan Davuluri as new head of Windows and Surface

Microsoft has appointed Pavan Davuluri as the new head of Windows and Surface divisions. Previously, the departments were led by Russian Mikhail Parakhin, writes The Verge.

Davuluri has taken over the work on silicon and Surface devices, while Mikhail Parakhin has been promoted to lead a new team that will focus on the Windows web experience. Davuluri will now be responsible for both Windows and Surface.

Davuluri has worked at Microsoft for more than 23 years and was actively involved in the company’s work with Qualcomm and Amd to create custom Surface processors.

The changes come a few days after Google DeepMind co-founder and former Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman joined Microsoft as the general manager of the new AI team.

The Windows team will work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experience, but there will be some interesting areas of potential overlap that these new leaders will have to navigate. The Microsoft AI team is currently working on the Edge browser.

Microsoft has also hired a group of Inflection AI employees, including co-founder Karen Simonian, who is now the chief scientist of Microsoft AI. As a result, most of Inflection’s employees joined Microsoft AI.

Microsoft AI will focus on consumer-facing AI products such as Copilot, Bing, and Edge. Suleiman reports directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and it seems that he was supposed to manage Mikhail Parakhin before the latter left the position.