Microsoft Bing chief to exit role after Mustafa Suleyman named AI leader

By Dina Bass

Microsoft Corp.’s Mikhail Parakhin, head of the company’s Bing search engine and advertising businesses, will exit those roles and look for a new position, a week after the software giant named Mustafa Suleyman to oversee consumer artificial intelligence work and asked Parakhin to report to him.
 

Parakhin, who had been chief executive officer for advertising and web services, will report to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott while searching for his next role, Microsoft said. Parakhin also oversaw some parts of the company’s Windows software business. That work will be shifted to Pavan Davuluri, who had been overseeing hardware and the rest of Windows. Davuluri will now run all of Windows and Surface hardware, reporting to Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha, who disclosed the changes in a staff email Monday.

Jha’s email and a spokesperson didn’t specify if Parakhin was likely to leave Microsoft or take a new role within the company.

Parakhin’s exit from a core part of the company’s consumer AI products marks the first shuffle stemming from CEO Satya Nadella’s move last week to install Suleyman, a co-founder of AI researcher DeepMind, as head of a unified push in the space.

The move illustrated Nadella’s impatience with his team’s efforts, two people familiar with his thinking said last week. Over the past year, Microsoft has baked AI into the Bing search engine, Windows, Office and other products, creating various digital assistants under the brand Copilot. Yet Bing has made few gains against search market leader Google, and other products remain works in progress.

The Verge reported earlier on the management changes.