Microsoft names former GE CFO as operations chief amid AI push

(Reuters) -Microsoft on Thursday named former GE finance chief Carolina Dybeck Happe as its chief operations officer, as the tech giant looks to bolster its leadership team while it doubles down on artificial intelligence.

Dybeck Happe, GE's finance chief between March 2020 and September 2023, was instrumental in leading the company's turnaround. She also helped complete the spin-off of energy infrastructure unit GE Vernova in April 2024, after she had stepped down from CFO's role.

She has previously held finance head roles at multiple companies, including at A.P. Moeller - Maersk and Swedish access control and security firm Assa Abloy.

The appointment comes at a time when Microsoft is aggressively pursuing the lead in the cloud services market and trying to close the gap with Amazon's Amazon Web Services.

"In this newly created role, she will join the senior leadership team (SLT), reporting to me," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, adding Dybeck Happe will be crucial in accelerating "company-wide AI transformation".

The SLT has been key to Microsoft's strategic decisions, including the multi-billion dollar investment in ChatGPT owner OpenAI, partnerships with other tech giants and even the acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard.

"The timing of Dybeck Happe's appointment may coincide with the implementation of lessons learned from the recent Crowdstrike outage that specifically impacted Microsoft devices. Microsoft can not allow this type of event to occur again," said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria.

Earlier this year, Microsoft tapped AI industry veteran Mustafa Suleyman to lead its AI operations and added him to the SLT. Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014 and now operates as its AI division.

To give investors a clearer picture on AI contributions to its financials, Microsoft last month restructured how it reports results for its business units, moving some search and news advertising revenue under the Azure cloud-computing unit.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar, Anil D'Silva and Shinjini Ganguli)