[艾略特]微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉的未来路径

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2023 年 2 月 7 日，微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉 (Satya Nadella) 在华盛顿州雷德蒙德举行的主题演讲中发表讲话，宣布微软将 ChatGPT 集成到 Bing 中。

杰森·雷德蒙德 |

法新社 |

盖蒂图片社

当萨蒂亚·纳德拉 (Satya Nadella) 取代史蒂夫·鲍尔默 (Steve Ballmer) 成为

2014 年 2 月担任首席执行官时，这家软件公司陷入了平庸。

其市值刚刚超过 3000 亿美元。

十年后，微软的估值增长了十倍，达到 3.06 万亿美元，成为全球市值最高的上市公司，领先于

。

它在云和人工智能等关键领域牢牢占据领导者地位。

在纳德拉庆祝其掌舵微软 10 周年之际，他因改变微软的叙事而受到整个科技行业的广泛赞誉，在鲍尔默掌舵的 14 年里，微软的股价下跌了 30%。

那个时代，公司被

在网络搜索和移动领域，而在社交媒体领域完全被抛在了后面。

许多科技行业分析师和投资者会说，在可预见的未来，微软现在已成为一家强大的公司，这在很大程度上要归功于纳德拉。

得到亚马逊

支持的人工智能初创公司 Perplexity 的联合创始人兼首席执行官阿拉文德·斯里尼瓦斯 (Aravind Srinivas) 表示，纳德拉“很特别，被认为是科技首席执行官中最伟大的人物之一”

创始人杰夫·贝佐斯。

首字母缩略词 GOAT 代表有史以来最伟大的。

在纳德拉追求进一步发展的过程中，他遇到了很多障碍。

监管机构对微软的实力感到担忧。

竞争对手都嫉妒了。

一些客户对在公司的人工智能工具上投入更多资金持怀疑态度，因为他们已经为如此多的微软产品分配了如此多的预算。

微软及其科技同行最近也进行了大规模裁员，在 2023 年初裁员 10,000 人，并在 1 月份从游戏部门裁员 1,900 人。

纳德拉接任时微软最大的痛点之一是其产品的封闭性。

众所周知，微软会捍卫其专有的 Windows 和 Office 软件，并谴责开源替代品。

互操作性并不是最流行的词。

"There was a little bit of a take-it-or-leave-it culture," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of cloud storage vendor Box, which spent its early years going directly after one of Microsoft's products. Nadella has made the company more attentive to customers' needs, Levie said. The two companies now have multiple product integrations.

Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Oct. 22, 2018.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nadella's Microsoft has also formed partnerships with some of its fiercest rivals. In 2023 Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison visited Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, for the first time, as the companies made a joint cloud announcement. In a 2020 interview, Pat Gelsinger, then CEO of VMware, said offering his company's software on Microsoft's Azure cloud was akin to a "Middle East peace treaty." Gelsinger now runs Intel, which makes chips for PCs running Microsoft Windows and clouds such as Azure.

In the Nadella age, Microsoft has also contributed to open-source projects, released software under open-source licenses and released a version of its Teams communications app for Linux.

Nadella has surprised people in other ways.

Michael Nathan was a senior director at Microsoft until 2016, when he left for a job in venture capital. Nathan said he told Nadella about the opportunity after the two of them left a customer meeting in Silicon Valley. Instead of getting angry or making the situation awkward, Nadella told him to take what he'd learned at Microsoft and share it.

"I was like, 'What?'" Nathan said. "That was amazing. He totally lifted the burden of having that conversation."

He's also decisive. In 2018, Nadella came to believe in the idea of buying GitHub just 20 minutes after Nat Friedman, then a Microsoft corporate vice president, started pitching him on it. Right away, Nadella suggested that Friedman become GitHub's new CEO, Friedman said. Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for the code-storage startup.

Microsoft declined to provide a comment for this story.

Nobody would mistake Nadella for Ballmer, the showman. His predecessor was known for dancing on stage at conferences and hyping up crowds of thousands. Ballmer is now the owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers and can frequently be seen behaving similarly courtside.

Steve Ballmer, former chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., gestures as he speaks during a news conference after he was introduced as the new owner of the Los Angeles Clippers in Los Angeles, California.

Kevork Djansezian | Bloomberg | Getty Images

While Nadella may not bring as much entertainment value, he's proven to be more effective than Ballmer when it comes to dealmaking. In addition to GitHub, Nadella has made pricey acquisitions such as LinkedIn, Minecraft parent Mojang, and Nuance Communications that have contributed to Microsoft's top line. Ballmer was not so lucky. His aQuantive and Nokia deals were disastrous.

More recently, Nadella helped Microsoft land the $75 billion acquisition of game publisher Activision Blizzard, a deal that investors won't know how to assess for a while. And in AI, Nadella is credited for investing billions of dollars in startup OpenAI, leading to product enhancements and cloud revenue from customers both new and old, and giving Microsoft a leadership position in an emerging market.

Nadella is perhaps best known in the tech industry for pushing Microsoft deeper into cloud computing. Azure, which delivered 30% revenue growth in the most recent quarter, was started during the Ballmer years. But Nadella brought it to life, transforming it from a research project into a product, said Kevin Dallas, CEO of database software company EDB and a 24-year Microsoft veteran.

"I'm shameless in saying I look at him as a leader that I've learned from, grown from," Dallas said. "I continue to watch him."

In looking at the road ahead for the 56-year-old Nadella, here are some of the biggest challenges in his way:

Relevance

Microsoft looked at buying TikTok in the U.S. in 2020, but nothing came of those discussions. While some in the younger generations have Microsoft software at work, it's not necessarily what they grew up using and may not be what they prefer. The company must prepare for the era when Gen Z is in charge of IT budgets. OpenAI's ChatGPT, which some students use, could be a start.

Retention

Some Microsoft employees have been there for over 20 years. Many will leave after far less time. For years, employees have said they can make more money at other big tech companies. Some have received higher compensation after leaving and then returning. Microsoft has $81 billion in cash and might want to use more of the stash to keep talent — especially the top tier — around for longer.

Products

Microsoft critics often say the company rarely gets it right the first time with new hardware or software and that it's best to wait for the third version. Reviewers didn't take kindly to the original 2012 Surface tablet, for example. Today's Surface gets better marks, but it's nowhere near the most popular tablet on Amazon — the iPad is. Microsoft remains weak when it comes to building products in new categories, a former executive said. The company's dual-screened Surface Duo phones running Android haven't caught on, and Microsoft Loop, a response to modern productivity apps such as Notion, has yet to catch fire in app stores.

Regulation

反垄断官员最近阻止了 Adob​​e 和亚马逊的收购。

他们试图阻止微软收购动视暴雪，但未能成功。

但微软在人工智能领域的大力推动是通过投资而非收购实现的。

联邦贸易委员会的 Lina Khan 一月份表示，该机构将审查云提供商对人工智能初创公司的投资。

微软在欧洲也因其云实践而受到质询。

监管打压对于微软来说并不是什么新鲜事，在 20 世纪 90 年代美国司法部提起一起备受瞩目的案件后，微软改变了一些行为。

OpenAI关系

在监管文件中，微软将 OpenAI 称为“我们的战略合作伙伴”。

这种安排的不同寻常之处在去年 11 月就得到了体现，董事会突然解雇了萨姆·奥尔特曼，纳德拉加班加点地努力让萨姆·奥尔特曼重回初创公司的巅峰。

微软和 OpenAI 竞相向企业出售人工智能服务，其关系可能会导致内部紧张。

例如，两位知情人士告诉 CNBC，在向 OpenAI 分配图形处理单元时，微软有时会剥夺其他部门的图形处理单元。

奥特曼在 11 月份的一次活动上告诉纳德拉，两家公司拥有“科技领域最好的合作伙伴关系”。

然而，一位知情人士表示，OpenAI 并不总是满足于依赖微软作为其云供应商。

在 11 月份的骚乱之后，纳德拉至少让微软在 OpenAI 董事会中获得了一个席位。

OpenAI 发言人告诉 CNBC，该公司将微软视为非常好的合作伙伴。

下一件大事

纳德拉不断寻找下一个可以产生收入和利润的类别。

该公司于 2016 年推出的 HoloLens 增强现实耳机并未大受欢迎。

纳德拉希望 2023 年 2 月添加到 Bing 搜索引擎的 AI Copilot 能够转化为份额收益，但谷歌仍然是该类别中明显的领导者。

纳德拉确实在本周的电话会议上表示，必应在第四季度获得了份额。

虽然人工智能可能是微软的下一件大事，但该公司将不得不继续寻找新的方法来推动增长。

纳德拉现在有很多事情可以让自己忙起来。

FactSet 的数据显示，分析师平均认为该公司的扩张足以预计明年股价将上涨 12%。

观察：

杰富瑞 (Jefferies) 的蒂尔 (Thill) 表示，微软“到目前为止”领先于竞争对手并占据市场份额

视频

杰富瑞 (Jefferies) 的蒂尔 (Thill) 表示，微软“迄今为止”领先于竞争对手并占据市场份额

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