Microsoft's LinkedIn Chief Is Now Running Office

Announced in an internal memo from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky has been appointed to also lead the Office, Outlook, and Microsoft 365 Copilot teams as part of an internal AI reorganization. Roslansky will report to Rajesh Jha for Office while continuing to run LinkedIn independently under Nadella. The Verge reports: 'LinkedIn remains a top priority and will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary,' says Nadella in his memo. 'This move brings us closer to the original vision we laid out nine years ago with the LinkedIn acquisition: connecting the world's economic graph with the Microsoft Graph. And I look forward to how Ryan will bring his product ethos and leadership to entertainment and devices.' Sumit Chauhan and Gaurav Sareen, senior executives in the Office and Microsoft 365 teams, will remain on the entertainment and devices leadership team, but along with their teams they'll join Jon Friedman and the UX team to work directly for Roslansky.

Charles Lamanna and his BIC team are also moving to report to Rajesh Jha as part of an AI shakeup. 'Charles has consistently kept us focused on what it takes to win in business applications and the agent layer, and I look forward to the impact he and his team will have in entertainment and devices,' says Nadella. In a separate memo, Lamanna also announced that starting July 2nd Lili Cheng will take on the newly expanded role of CTO of the BIC team. Dan Lewis is also taking on the role of corporate vice president of Copilot Studio. 'We are poised to reinvent every role and every business process, and start to reimagine organizations as composed of people and agents,' says Lamanna in an internal memo.

Both the Lamanna and Roslansky moves are very interesting, as the business Copilot team and Microsoft 365 Copilot team have been in separate parts of Microsoft's sprawling AI and cloud teams up until this point. This has led to a situation where nobody really owns Copilot all up inside Microsoft, but now the separate leaders of Microsoft 365 Copilot and the business Copilot teams now both report to Rajesh Jha. The consumer Copilot will still be run by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.