Microsoft overhauled its long-standing senior leadership structure as Chief Executive reorganized the company to accelerate AI development and cut decision-making time, executives said. The firm replaced its Senior Leadership Team with a new corporate governance group that includes the CEO, the president, the chief financial officer, the chief human resources officer and the business chief, and said the group will meet at least once a week.
According to Business Insider, the platform shift is occurring at unprecedented speed because Microsoft "cannot afford" to move even one step too slowly. The CEO has told leadership that the company's massive scale had become a disadvantage in the AI era and has studied startup operating models to inform the changes.
The company created a separate leadership cohort of roughly 35 engineering and product executives to reduce lengthy information handoffs, executives disclosed. For the Copilot product line, three senior product leads now form a dedicated team that reports directly to the CEO on a weekly basis, the firm announced.
Fortune reported that in January 2026 the CEO personally used AI tools to write code and build a multi-agent control system called "Chain of Debate," which he showed to engineers to push acceleration and which helped form the core architecture behind Copilot Tasks. The AI division head was reassigned away from consumer AI products to focus on leading an approximately 650-member MAI Superintelligence Team charged with building in-house AI capabilities by 2030, leadership stated.
The leadership shakeup included several senior departures and transitions. A veteran executive who served 35 years will retire in July, and a senior marketing executive announced his departure. The head of the gaming business will change as the current Xbox chief retires after 38 years, with a successor who has prior experience at Meta and Instacart named to lead the gaming unit, the company said.
Article edited by Jingyue Hsiao
