• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 26, 2024

Mikhail Parakhin is stepping down from his role as the head of Bing Search and Microsoft Advertising, but it is unclear whether he will transition to a new role within or outside the company.

Over the past 16 years, Parakhin has worked for Microsoft and Yandex. At Yandex he served as director between March 2014 and May 2015, and then as CTO between May 2015 and August 2019.  

Most recently at Microsoft, he worked on Bing Chat before taking on a broader Windows engineering role related to Changes at Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft, which has been pushing to integrate artificial intelligence into all of its products, reintroduced Bing Search with AI-powered features in February 2023, but the changes taking place could indicate a major shift in the company to eliminate the Bing Search brand for a more integrated name such as Copilot Search.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed Parakin's role change that comes one week after Microsoft named Mustafa Suleyman to oversee consumer artificial intelligence (AI) and asked Parakhin to report to him.

Parakhin also oversaw some parts of the company’s Windows software business. That work will shift to Pavan Davuluri, who had overseen hardware and the rest of Windows.

Parakhin, who had been CEO for advertising and web services, will report to CTO Kevin Scott while searching for his next role, according to an email from a Microsoft spokesperson, citing an internal memo from Rajesh Jha, EVP head of experiences and devices at Microsoft.

Davuluri has worked at Microsoft for more than 23 years. He will run all of Windows and Surface hardware, reporting to Jha.

The memo sites the changes as a result of the "AI" many times, and describes how the Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon, and experiences. 

"We are excited for this team to help Microsoft AI achieve its bold ambition to build world-class consumer AI products," Jha wrote. "And I very much look forward to closely partnering with Mustafa and the team as we bring our AI products, including Copilot, to the breadth of our E+D products and services."

It will enable the company to take a "holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences and devices for Windows and the era of artificial intelligence (AI). "