Windows is coming back together. Microsoft is bringing its key Windows engineering teams under a single organization again, as part of a reorg being announced today. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri, who was just promoted to president of Windows and devices earlier this month, shared the changes to Microsoft’s Windows teams in an internal memo.
“This change unifies Windows engineering work under a single organization,” Davuluri wrote in the memo, which was seen by The Verge. “Moving the teams working on Windows client and server together into one organization brings focus to delivering against our priorities.”
This the first major Windows reorg since Davuluri was promoted to Windows and Surface chief more than a year ago. The changes mean the leaders of the Windows teams for Core OS, Data Intelligence and Fundamentals, Security, and Engineering Systems all now report up to Davuluri. It also means that most of the engineering work for Windows is now under a single division leader, rather than shared with Microsoft’s Azure teams.
The reorg will help “deliver our vision of Windows as an Agentic OS”
In 2018, when former Windows chief Terry Myerson left Microsoft, the company split up Windows into two teams, with the core of the Windows platform team moving to the Azure side and the client parts of Windows moving to a new Experiences & Devices team. While former Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay clawed back some of the Windows fundamentals and developer experience teams in 2020, the core engineering teams of Windows were still separate from the employees shipping software like Windows 11 until today.
Some low level parts of Windows will still be maintained by Microsoft’s Azure teams, but the bulk of Windows is now under a single leader. “There are clear areas where we know we will continue to work with and support the Azure organization, such as in Storage and Networking and Security,” Davuluri wrote. “Likewise, we will continue to have dependencies from the core kernel and virtualization and Linux teams, now part of Azure Core, to provide the foundational support for client scenarios, silicon enablement, and WSL.”
Reuniting the Windows team puts a lot more responsibility on Davuluri as Microsoft increasingly looks towards overhauling the operating system with AI features. Davuluri even says the reorg will help “deliver our vision of Windows as an Agentic OS.”
Microsoft recently created the Windows AI Labs program to trial experimental artificial intelligence features inside Windows 11. The software maker has also been adding a bunch of AI features to Windows 11 in recent months, including a Copilot Vision tool and an AI-powered Settings agent.
