Microsoft On Tuesday, the software company told employees after months that it was promoting four sales executives Become a sales leader Judson Althoff serves as chief executive officer of commercial operations.

Investors have long wondered how much Microsoft and other long-established software companies can grow as corporate employees use generative AI models to build new applications. Microsoft shares are down 15% so far this year, lagging all other stocks among the seven largest technology stocks.

Last week Microsoft released its Azure cloud growth report lower than some forecasts. Executives said they want to allocate more computing resources to research and development teams and their artificial intelligence products, such as the Microsoft 365 Copilot productivity software plug-in and GitHub Copilot coding assistant, while still meeting the needs of Azure customers.

“Judson has expanded the leadership team’s remit to free up more time to focus on Microsoft’s commercial product strategy and minimize the feedback loop between customers and product decisions,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “This feedback loop is critical now because artificial intelligence is being adopted at an alarming rate and our customers expect these capabilities to work in their businesses faster than ever before.”

Deb Cupp, chief revenue officer for Microsoft’s worldwide enterprise sales, is the company’s newest executive vice president, Altoff said in a memo. In recent years, Koop has gone from president of Microsoft’s U.S. operations to president of North America and then president of the Americas.

Nick Parker, chief commercial officer for global sales and solutions, will also become executive vice president. He has been with the company since 2000.

Ralph Haupter becomes executive vice president, small business and channel and chief revenue officer. Haupter joins Microsoft International Business Machines Corporation In 2005, he served as CEO and Chairman of Windows and Office’s Greater China business for four years.

Mala Anand, former sap The executive who joined Microsoft in 2019 will serve as executive vice president and chief customer experience officer.

The spokesman said the four will continue to report to Altov.

Satya Nadella, an executive vice president who served as Microsoft CEO since 2014, has focused on innovation while Althoff has taken on more responsibility. At a software developer event in India in December, he show off He developed an application that uses a large number of generative artificial intelligence models to study topics.

“I started my career at the command line,” Nadella said. podcast Recorded at a conference in Davos, Switzerland, in January. “Who knows? I might end it on the command line.”

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