Microsoft forms new AI group under former Facebook head of engineering Jay Parikh
Lacework
- Microsoft formed a new engineering group led by Jay Parikh to build AI tools.
- Microsoft anticipates AI agents will fundamentally change application development.
- The new CoreAI Platform and Tools group will combine various AI teams and build out GitHub Copilot.
Microsoft created a new engineering organization responsible for building its artificial-intelligence platform and tools, CEO Satya Nadella said in an email to employees Monday morning.
The new group will be led by Jay Parikh, Facebook's former head of engineering whom Nadella added to Microsoft's senior leadership team in October.
Microsoft is forming the group as it anticipates that AI, and particularly AI agents, will present a fundamental shift in how applications are built and used.
"2025 will be about model-forward applications that reshape all application categories," Nadella wrote in the email, which was also posted on Microsoft's blog. "More so than any previous platform shift, every layer of the application stack will be impacted. It's akin to GUI, internet servers, and cloud-native databases all being introduced into the app stack simultaneously. Thirty years of change is being compressed into three years!"
It said the new group, called CoreAI Platform and Tools, would include Microsoft's developer division and AI platform team and be responsible for building out GitHub Copilot. AI-related teams from the office of the chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, such as AI Supercomputer, AI Agentic Runtimes, and Engineering Thrive, would also be part of the new group.
Parikh worked at Facebook for more than a decade. He helped the company build out and maintain its massive technical infrastructure, a network of expensive data centers stocked with thousands of computers spanning several continents.
As one of Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants, Parikh also spearheaded various ambitious initiatives such as internet connectivity and an internet drone project that was eventually abandoned.
At Microsoft, Parikh's new reports include Eric Boyd, a corporate vice president of AI platform; Jason Taylor, a deputy CTO for AI infrastructure; Julia Liuson, president of the developer division; and Tim Bozarth, a corporate vice president of developer infrastructure.
The email said Parikh would also work closely with the cloud-and-AI chief Scott Guthrie; the experiences-and-devices leader Rajesh Jha; the security boss Charlie Bell; the consumer AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman; and Scott, the CTO.
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