Satya Nadella changed Microsoft’s culture before he changed its strategy
How Microsoft’s third CEO moved the company from Windows to the cloud, and then to AI.
When Satya Nadella became Microsoft’s third chief executive in February 2014, the company was profitable, enormous and widely seen as having missed the shift to mobile. He started with something that does not show up on a product roadmap: how the company thinks.
Nadella had joined Microsoft in 1992. Born in Hyderabad, he studied electrical engineering in India before earning a master’s in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Before becoming CEO, he ran the group that built Microsoft’s cloud business, which became Azure.
A culture first
Nadella borrowed the idea of a “growth mindset” from the psychologist Carol Dweck and made it the language of Microsoft’s culture: a company of learners rather than know-it-alls. He wrote about the shift in his 2017 book, Hit Refresh.
The strategy followed. Office moved to subscriptions and onto iPhone and Android. Azure became a central business. Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016, GitHub in 2018 and Activision Blizzard in 2023.
The AI bet
In 2019 Microsoft began its partnership with OpenAI, and it has since built AI assistants under the Copilot name across its products. In July 2025 Microsoft passed $4 trillion in market value. Nadella has been chairman of the board since 2021.
He has also been public about the risks. At the World Economic Forum in January 2026, he argued that the benefits of AI need to reach more people and industries if the boom is not to become a bubble.
What to watch
The cost of AI infrastructure is the open question for every large cloud company. Microsoft is spending heavily on data centers, and investors will judge Nadella’s AI bet on whether that spending turns into durable revenue.
- Company
- Microsoft
- Role
- Chairman & CEO
- HQ
- Redmond, Washington
- Founded
- 1975
- Section
- Software
This profile draws on public reporting and company materials.
Sources: Wikipedia: Satya Nadella · IDN Financials: Nadella on AI in 2026 · Business Standard: Satya Nadella
Photo: Brian Smale and Microsoft, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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