Indian Tech Talent Takes Lead at Microsoft: Pavan Davuluri Appointed Head of Windows and Surface

Pavan Davuluri, an esteemed alumnus of IIT Madras, has been named the new head of Microsoft Windows and Surface, following in the footsteps of industry giants like Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella, also of Microsoft.

Davuluri steps into the shoes of long-serving product chief Panos Panay, who departed last year to join Amazon. Previously, Davuluri managed the Surface Group while Mikhail Parakhin led the Windows department. With the departures of Parakhin and Panay, Davuluri now assumes leadership of both departments.

In an internal memo, Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s head of experiences and devices, outlined the organizational restructuring that will lead to a “holistic approach” to developing devices and experiences in the “AI era”. “We are changing and as a result, we are merging the Windows Experiences and Windows + Devices teams to form the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division. This will allow us to take a comprehensive approach towards creating silicon, systems, experiences, and devices that cater to the AI era and span across Windows clients and the cloud. Pavan Davuluri will be leading this team and will continue reporting to me. Shilpa Ranganathan and Jeff Johnson along with their teams will report directly to Pavan. The Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experiences,” stated the memo.

With over 23 years of experience at Microsoft, Davuluri has been instrumental in collaborations with Qualcomm and AMD to develop processors for Surface.

“We are excited for this team to help Microsoft AI achieve its bold ambition to build world-class consumer AI products. And I very much look forward to closely partnering with Mustafa and the team as we bring our AI products, including Copilot, to the breadth of our E+D products and services,” the memo added.

This reorganization follows closely after Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google DeepMind and former Inflection AI CEO, joined Microsoft as the CEO of its new AI team.