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2023 年 2 月 7 日，微軟首席執行官薩蒂亞·納德拉 (Satya Nadella) 在華盛頓州雷德蒙德舉行的主題演講中發表講話，宣布微軟將 ChatGPT 集成到 Bing 中。

杰森·雷德蒙德 |

法新社 |

蓋蒂圖片社

當薩蒂亞·納德拉 (Satya Nadella) 取代史蒂夫·鮑爾默 (Steve Ballmer) 成為

2014 年 2 月擔任首席執行官時，這家軟件公司陷入了平庸。

其市值剛剛超過 3000 億美元。

十年后，微軟的估值增長了十倍，達到 3.06 萬億美元，成為全球市值最高的上市公司，領先于

。

它在云和人工智能等關鍵領域牢牢占據領導者地位。

在納德拉慶祝其掌舵微軟 10 周年之際，他因改變微軟的敘事而受到整個科技行業的廣泛贊譽，在鮑爾默掌舵的 14 年里，微軟的股價下跌了 30%。

那個時代，公司被

在網絡搜索和移動領域，而在社交媒體領域完全被拋在了后面。

許多科技行業分析師和投資者會說，在可預見的未來，微軟現在已成為一家強大的公司，這在很大程度上要歸功于納德拉。

得到亞馬遜

支持的人工智能初創公司 Perplexity 的聯合創始人兼首席執行官阿拉文德·斯里尼瓦斯 (Aravind Srinivas) 表示，納德拉“很特別，被認為是科技首席執行官中最偉大的人物之一”

創始人杰夫·貝佐斯。

首字母縮略詞 GOAT 代表有史以來最偉大的。

在納德拉追求進一步發展的過程中，他遇到了很多障礙。

監管機構對微軟的實力感到擔憂。

競爭對手都嫉妒了。

一些客戶對在公司的人工智能工具上投入更多資金持懷疑態度，因為他們已經為如此多的微軟產品分配了如此多的預算。

微軟及其科技同行最近也進行了大規模裁員，在 2023 年初裁員 10,000 人，并在 1 月份從游戲部門裁員 1,900 人。

納德拉接任時微軟最大的痛點之一是其產品的封閉性。

眾所周知，微軟會捍衛其專有的 Windows 和 Office 軟件，并譴責開源替代品。

互操作性并不是最流行的詞。

"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

反壟斷官員最近阻止了 Adob??e 和亞馬遜的收購。

他們試圖阻止微軟收購動視暴雪，但未能成功。

但微軟在人工智能領域的大力推動是通過投資而非收購實現的。

聯邦貿易委員會的 Lina Khan 一月份表示，該機構將審查云提供商對人工智能初創公司的投資。

微軟在歐洲也因其云實踐而受到質詢。

監管打壓對于微軟來說并不是什么新鮮事，在 20 世紀 90 年代美國司法部提起一起備受矚目的案件后，微軟改變了一些行為。

OpenAI關系

在監管文件中，微軟將 OpenAI 稱為“我們的戰略合作伙伴”。

這種安排的不同尋常之處在去年 11 月就得到了體現，董事會突然解雇了薩姆·奧爾特曼，納德拉加班加點地努力讓薩姆·奧爾特曼重回初創公司的巔峰。

微軟和 OpenAI 競相向企業出售人工智能服務，其關系可能會導致內部緊張。

例如，兩位知情人士告訴 CNBC，在向 OpenAI 分配圖形處理單元時，微軟有時會剝奪其他部門的圖形處理單元。

奧特曼在 11 月份的一次活動上告訴納德拉，兩家公司擁有“科技領域最好的合作伙伴關系”。

然而，一位知情人士表示，OpenAI 并不總是滿足于依賴微軟作為其云供應商。

在 11 月份的騷亂之后，納德拉至少讓微軟在 OpenAI 董事會中獲得了一個席位。

OpenAI 發言人告訴 CNBC，該公司將微軟視為非常好的合作伙伴。

下一件大事

納德拉不斷尋找下一個可以產生收入和利潤的類別。

該公司于 2016 年推出的 HoloLens 增強現實耳機并未大受歡迎。

納德拉希望 2023 年 2 月添加到 Bing 搜索引擎的 AI Copilot 能夠轉化為份額收益，但谷歌仍然是該類別中明顯的領導者。

納德拉確實在本周的電話會議上表示，必應在第四季度獲得了份額。

雖然人工智能可能是微軟的下一件大事，但該公司將不得不繼續尋找新的方法來推動增長。

納德拉現在有很多事情可以讓自己忙起來。

FactSet 的數據顯示，分析師平均認為該公司的擴張足以預計明年股價將上漲 12%。

觀察：

杰富瑞 (Jefferies) 的蒂爾 (Thill) 表示，微軟“到目前為止”領先于競爭對手并占據市場份額

視頻

杰富瑞 (Jefferies) 的蒂爾 (Thill) 表示，微軟“迄今為止”領先于競爭對手并占據市場份額

街上嘎嘎叫

熱點：艾略特 首席 首席執行官