Jay Parikh, former Meta exec, helms Microsoft's new AI division for platforms & tools

Jay Parikh, a former CEO of cybersecurity startup Lacework and former global head of engineering at Meta, is taking up a new position at Microsoft.

Parikh, who joined Microsoft’s senior leadership team last year, leads Redmond’s new “CoreAI – Platform and Tools” engineering division, a new AI division that builds tools and systems that make it easier for developers to create AI apps using Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, announced the new team this week. Once formed, CoreAI would unify key teams from Microsoft’s Dev Div, AI Platform, and Office of the CTO to create an AI-powered app ecosystem, with a focus on tools like GitHub Copilot and Azure AI.

“The mission,” says Nadella, is to, “build the end-to-end Copilot & AI stack for both our first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI apps and agents.”

“Jay Parikh will lead this group as EVP of CoreAI – Platform and Tools, with Eric Boyd, Jason Taylor, Julia Liuson, Tim Bozarth, and their respective teams reporting to Jay,” he continues.

Parikh will also work closely with Mustafa Suleyman, a former DeepMind & Inflection boss who jumped ship to Microsoft when Nadela formed the new Microsoft AI division.

The AI org, launched in March 2024, focuses on advancing AI products, including Copilot for Windows 11 and 10. Several former Inflection top talents also joined the organization, which led to investigations into whether Microsoft’s $650 million payment to license Inflection’s tech violated anti-merger laws due to the talent hires.

In September 2024, the UK’s CMA concluded that the deal amounted to a “merger situation” but did not pose a threat to competition due to Inflection’s small share in the UK consumer market.