Yusuf Mehdi, one among Microsoft’s best-known and longest-serving enterprise leaders, whose tenure has spanned 35 years from Home windows 3.1 to Copilot, plans to go away the corporate after yet another yr — his “ultimate season,” as he referred to as it in an interview.
Mehdi, 59, is Microsoft’s EVP and shopper chief advertising officer, overseeing product advertising for Home windows, Floor, Copilot, Microsoft 365 shopper, Edge, and Bing search engine. He introduced his plan Thursday, saying he intends to work at full depth via the following fiscal yr, making certain succession plans are in place, earlier than stepping away from the corporate that has been, as he put it, “the canvas of my life’s work.”
He in contrast it to selecting a ship date for a product, one thing he’s had a variety of expertise with throughout his time on the firm. You place it on the calendar, and you’re employed towards it.
“There might be time later to mirror and rejoice, however for now, it’s full velocity forward on our mission,” Mehdi wrote in an inner electronic mail to his staff on Thursday afternoon.
After that? He’s undecided, however he’s not calling it retirement. He stated he nonetheless feels younger and energetic, and he has some concepts in thoughts, however he emphasised that he hasn’t made any plans.
Mehdi stated he has been working intently with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Takeshi Numoto on the transition plan. Microsoft has not named a successor, and he stated it’s too early to find out what the management construction will appear to be after his departure.
His priorities over the following yr will embrace positioning Home windows for the agentic period, unifying Microsoft Copilot as a seamless expertise throughout work and private lives, and scaling the Microsoft 365 shopper enterprise because it approaches 100 million subscriptions.
His work on Home windows, specifically, is “a little bit poetic,” he stated, since that’s the place he began.
Mehdi’s profession at Microsoft has touched practically each main shopper product the corporate has shipped. He began as an intern in 1991, in his mid-20s, after a two-year stint at Reuters, the place he labored on computer-based merchandise for the international alternate buying and selling enterprise.
He joined Microsoft full-time in 1992 after incomes his MBA from the College of Washington, including to a bachelor’s diploma in economics from Princeton.
After his early work on the launch of Home windows 3.1 and Home windows 95, Mehdi went on to assist launch and market Web Explorer throughout the browser wars. He spent greater than a decade working Microsoft’s on-line providers and search companies, serving to construct Bing and enjoying a central position within the firm’s search and promoting partnership with Yahoo.
In 2011, he moved to the Xbox division, the place he helped launch the Xbox One and solid the NFL partnership that put Floor tablets on the sidelines. He later oversaw the rollout of Home windows 10 to greater than 1 billion gadgets, and took on duty for the Home windows and Floor companies after Panos Panay’s departure in 2023.
That very same yr, he was promoted to his present position on Microsoft’s senior management staff, turning into the general public face of the corporate’s shopper AI push, from the launch of the AI-powered Bing search engine to the advertising of Microsoft Copilot.
Mehdi plans to remain via the tip of Microsoft’s subsequent fiscal yr, June 30, 2027.
