Key Highlights:
- Satya Nadella is reportedly involved directly in Microsoft’s AI strategy these days, as a new report claims that he is now directly taking product decisions related to Copilot.
- He is actively engaging with Microsoft’s top engineers by participating in private Teams channel for weekly meetings to roll out Copilot improvements.
- Nadella has voiced his frustration about Copilot, especially its consumer-facing features, which he claims is underwhelming, including app integrations compared to rivals like Google’s Gemini.
Ever since AI picked up the hype, Microsoft has been one of the frontrunners in the race, alongside some of the big names, like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and more. At this point, the company has been pushing AI so much that Windows users have started feeling annoyed with everything Microsoft has to announce about Copilot. Last month, Windows chief Pavan Davuluri took to X and shared a post mentioning that Windows is evolving into an agentic OS. That very post didn’t sit well with already-frustrated Windows users, who called out the company under Davuluri’s post about forcing users to adopt the company’s, what they call as mediocre assistant that doesn’t add much value to their lives.
Meanwhile, Microsoft AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, has defended the company’s approach. In a recently shared post on X, Suleyman even went on to say, “Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming. I grew up playing Snake on a Nokia phone! The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me.” Even though Microsoft is making gradual progress in terms of AI, the company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, is worried about the underwhelming response from users.
Microsoft CEO is actively looking over Copilot development
According to an exclusive report by The Information, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is now directly working to rebalance the company’s AI efforts. Nadella is reportedly now fully involved in product decision-making as there’s a lot of pressure to deliver results from massive AI investments. The report also mentions that Nadella is now part of a private Microsoft Teams channel that includes around 100 of the company’s top technical leaders. People familiar with the matter say that he regularly posts detailed feedback when he feels Microsoft’s AI products are underperforming, especially compared to rivals.
Nadella also engages in a weekly, hour-long meeting with many of the same engineers. During these sessions, he reportedly challenges teams directly on progress and execution, sometimes orders on how work should change. One recent example involved in pushing the core team to consolidate how they handle post-training, a critical late-stage process in AI model development.
The report also highlights Nadella’s frustration with parts of Microsoft Copilot, particularly its consumer-facing features. In a recent internal email reviewed by the news outlet, Nadella criticized how Copilot connects with email services like Gmail and Outlook, saying the integrations “for the most part don’t really work” and are “not smart.”
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Microsoft is concerned about increasing competition with rivals
The feedback reportedly came after a Microsoft manager pointed out improvements Google has made to Gemini, including deep integration with Google Drive for summarizing photos and content stored in folders. Internally, Nadella is now being described as Microsoft’s most influential product manager.
Big AI giants are already pouring in billions of dollars, so, understandably, they want their product to succeed in the market. Similar to Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently also declared a code red call inside the organization to focus heavily on making the in-house model as efficient as its rivals. GPT-5.2, which was recently released, was in fact fast-tracked after mounting pressure from the performance of Gemini 3 pushed earlier this month by Google. Speaking of OpenAI, the company is also working on a Codex model. You can read more about it here.
Do you think Copilot is actually useful? Do you use it regularly? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
