Microsoft Appoints New CMO as It Focuses on the ‘Era of AI’

  Rassegna Stampa, Social
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After a 32-year run, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer Chris Capossela is stepping down, as this “new era of AI is upon us,” according to a message to employees from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Top line

Microsoft revealed today that Takeshi Numoto, former evp and commercial chief marketing officer, will assume the position of CMO. This transition comes as Capossela leaves the company after a tenure of over three decades.

“Takeshi has been at the heart of our Cloud transformation, he’s a fantastic systems thinker who works end-to-end across all functions from engineering to finance to operations to sales, and he’s built a great team of marketing leaders,” wrote Nadella.

Between the lines

These leadership changes come as Microsoft is focused on investing in generative AI to power its growth. The company invested $13 billion in AI start-up OpenAI, home to hit product ChatGPT.

In its latest quarterly earnings, Microsoft reported strong sales figures, signaling the positive impact of the company’s bet on generative AI. Revenue jumped 19% to $24.3 billion in the Intelligent Cloud division in the last three months, thanks to a cloud partnership with Oracle.

“About three percentage points of Azure’s growth came from generative AI products, including the access Microsoft provides to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model,” per The New York Times.

This marks a turnaround for Microsoft’s cloud product, which had previously been grappling with a slow growth trajectory, per the earnings.

Bottom line

Meanwhile, Yusuf Mehdi, who has spearheaded several AI initiatives, will assume Numoto’s previous role as evp and consumer chief marketing officer, reporting directly to Numoto. Mehdi’s responsibilities encompass the oversight of Microsoft’s end-user experiences and the rollout of AI-powered services, with a particular focus on spearheading Microsoft Copilot product marketing.

Microsoft recently closed its nearly two-year fight over the $75 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard.

Following this, the company plans to increase its growth in the gaming market, moving Ami Silverman, corporate vice president for consumer sales, and the consumer sales organization, under its CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer.

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