After a 32-year run, Microsoft’s chief advertising and marketing officer Chris Capossela is stepping down, as this “new period of AI is upon us,” in response to a message to workers from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
High line
Microsoft revealed at the moment that Takeshi Numoto, former evp and business chief advertising and marketing officer, will assume the place of CMO. This transition comes as Capossela leaves the corporate after a tenure of over three many years.
“Takeshi has been on the coronary heart of our Cloud transformation, he’s a implausible programs thinker who works end-to-end throughout all capabilities from engineering to finance to operations to gross sales, and he’s constructed a fantastic workforce of promoting leaders,” wrote Nadella.
Between the traces
These management modifications come as Microsoft is targeted on investing in generative AI to energy its development. The corporate invested $13 billion in AI start-up OpenAI, residence to hit product ChatGPT.
In its newest quarterly earnings, Microsoft reported sturdy gross sales figures, signaling the optimistic influence of the corporate’s wager on generative AI. Income jumped 19% to $24.3 billion within the Clever Cloud division within the final three months, due to a cloud partnership with Oracle.
“About three share factors of Azure’s development got here from generative AI merchandise, together with the entry Microsoft gives to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language mannequin,” per The New York Occasions.
This marks a turnaround for Microsoft’s cloud product, which had beforehand been grappling with a gradual development trajectory, per the earnings.
Backside line
In the meantime, Yusuf Mehdi, who has spearheaded a number of AI initiatives, will assume Numoto’s earlier position as evp and shopper chief advertising and marketing officer, reporting on to Numoto. Mehdi’s duties embody the oversight of Microsoft’s end-user experiences and the rollout of AI-powered companies, with a specific give attention to spearheading Microsoft Copilot product advertising and marketing.
Microsoft lately closed its almost two-year battle over the $75 billion deal to purchase Activision Blizzard.
Following this, the corporate plans to extend its development within the gaming market, shifting Ami Silverman, company vice chairman for shopper gross sales, and the buyer gross sales group, beneath its CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer.
