Microsoft is restructuring its Windows division to reunite its primary engineering teams under a single organization, as announced internally by Pavan Davuluri, the newly appointed president of Windows and devices.
In a memo detailing the changes, Davuluri explained the rationale behind the move, stating, “This change unifies Windows engineering work under a single organization. Moving the teams working on Windows client and server together into one organization brings focus to delivering against our priorities.”
This significant reorganization, the first since Davuluri’s appointment as the chief of Windows and Surface over a year ago, will see the leaders of several key Windows teams reporting directly to him. These teams include Core OS, Data Intelligence and Fundamentals, Security, and Engineering Systems. The new structure consolidates the majority of engineering work for the Windows operating system under one divisional leader, departing from the previous model where responsibility was shared with Microsoft’s Azure teams.
The decision reverses a major organizational split that occurred in 2018, when Microsoft divided the Windows platform following the departure of former Windows chief Terry Myerson. At that time, the core platform team was integrated into the Azure division, while the client-facing aspects of Windows were moved into a newly created Experiences & Devices team. A partial reunification occurred in 2020 when then-chief Panos Panay brought back some of the Windows fundamentals and developer experience teams. However, the core engineering teams for Windows remained separate from the groups shipping products like Windows 11 until this latest reorganization.
While the reunification brings the bulk of Windows development under Davuluri, some low-level platform components will remain under the purview of Microsoft’s Azure teams. Davuluri’s memo specified, “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. 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.”
The consolidation of the Windows teams places more responsibility on Davuluri, particularly as Microsoft intensifies its efforts to integrate artificial intelligence features throughout the operating system. Davuluri stated that the new structure will help the company “deliver our vision of Windows as an Agentic OS.”
In line with this AI focus, Microsoft recently launched the Windows AI Labs program to trial experimental artificial intelligence capabilities inside Windows 11. Over the past several months, the company has also added multiple AI-driven features to the operating system, including a Copilot Vision tool and an AI-powered agent within the Settings application.
