Microsoft has elevated Judson Althoff to CEO of its commercial business in a leadership shake-up. One designed to sharpen its enterprise focus while freeing up Satya Nadella to concentrate on technical priorities.
Althoff, a 12-year company veteran, previously served as executive vice president and chief commercial officer.
He now takes charge of sales, marketing and operations, which together represent the lion’s share of Microsoft’s revenue. The engineering side of the business remains with Nadella and product leaders.
In a memo to staff, Nadella said the restructure was triggered by what he called a “tectonic AI platform shift”. He argued that pulling marketing and operations into Althoff’s remit would tighten the feedback loop between customer needs and delivery.
Nadella added that the change will allow him to be “laser focused” on data centre build-out, systems architecture, AI science and product innovation.
Microsoft’s main main is frantically delegating to ‘CEOs’ so he can focus on AI
The reorganisation also sees marketing chief Takeshi Numoto reporting directly to Althoff on commercial work, while maintaining a line to Nadella for company-wide brand and business model strategy.
Microsoft’s operations organisation has also been shifted to Althoff, while COO Carolina Dybeck Happe continues reporting to Nadella. But she will work closely with the new commercial chief.
Microsoft has increasingly handed out CEO titles across its major divisions. Gaming is led by ‘CEO’ Phil Spencer, while former DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who now runs Microsoft AI, has a CEO title as well.
Analysts say the latest move is less about succession planning and more about speeding up decision-making across the company’s commercial engine, which feeds its Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot franchises.
For Australian enterprise buyers and partners, Althoff’s elevation means one point of accountability on pricing, bundling and support, while Nadella keeps his focus squarely on making sure Microsoft stays at the front of the global AI race.