Microsoft reshuffles AI leadership, brings new head of Copilot

Microsoft announced a major leadership shuffle on March 17, 2026. The tech giant is unifying the engineering teams behind its commercial and consumer Copilot assistants, due to slower-than-expected adoption.

The Copilot system across commercial and consumer products will now consist of four core parts: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models. CEO Satya Nadella said in the company blog post, “This is how we move from a collection of great products to a truly integrated system, one that is simpler and more powerful for customers.”

Jacob Andreou, who previously worked within Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division, has been appointed executive vice president (EVP) to lead the Copilot experience across both commercial and consumer products. 

In this role, he will oversee design, product development, growth, and engineering for the Copilot AI assistant and will report directly to Nadella. Before joining Microsoft, Andreou was SVP at Snap, helping the company scale from the ground up.

On the other hand, executives Ryan Roslansky, Perry Clarke, and Charles Lamanna will together be leading the Microsoft 365 applications and the Copilot platform, Nadella said.

The AI leadership shuffle was announced to give Mustafa Suleyman more time to focus on developing new AI technology. Previously, he was responsible for overseeing Copilot-related efforts. Now, with new leaders stepping in to take over those responsibilities, he will be freed from these duties.

Suleyman said, “The next phase of this plan is to restructure our organisation to enable me to focus all my energy on our Superintelligence efforts and be able to deliver world-class models for Microsoft over the next 5 years. These models will enable us to build enterprise-tuned lineages that help improve all our products across the company.”

In November 2025, Microsoft announced the superintelligence unit, headed by Suleyman. He said that building advanced AI models has always been his core priority. Now, alongside managing the new AI team, Suleyman will remain actively involved in the daily operations of Microsoft’s broader AI division, which also includes the Bing search engine.