On Tuesday, Microsoft officially named Satya Nadella, a longtime Microsoft veteran, as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer, replacing outgoing chief Steve Ballmer.
A native of India, Nadella, 46, most recently served as Microsoft’s enterprise and cloud leader.
With a perspective based on more than two decades at Microsoft as someone who pushed to make dynamic changes happen, both in the company’s products and its culture, Satya Nadella says he is both “honored and humbled” to succeed Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as the third CEO of Microsoft.
“Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation,” Nadella said today. “The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must move faster, focus and continue to transform. I see a big part of my job as accelerating our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.”
Microsoft also announced that company founder and former CEO Bill Gates will step down from his position as chairman of Microsoft.
“During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella,” Gates said in a news release this morning. “Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together.”
