Xbox CEO ends Copilot AI development & overhauls leadership

by

Asha Sharma announced that Xbox will stop offering Copilot on phones and completely end console development. The new CEO shared these plans, along with significant leadership changes, in a memo to employees on Tuesday, as the company works to improve its financial performance.

Satya Nadella appointed Sarah Bond as CEO of Xbox in February, after Phil Spencer stepped down. Bond joined Microsoft in 2024, bringing experience from leadership positions at Meta and Instacart. Prior to leading Xbox, she was president of product for Microsoft’s CoreAI engineering group.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announces Copilot cuts and leadership overhaul

According to a memo reported by CNBC, Microsoft Gaming CEO Sarah Bond believes Xbox needs to be more agile and connect more directly with its players. She wrote that the company is currently too slow to deliver meaningful updates, spends too much time on internal processes instead of engaging with the community, and needs to strengthen its core foundations.

She explained on X that the recent Copilot changes were features that didn’t fit with the company’s future plans.

Xbox is working to improve by being more responsive, strengthening its relationship with players and creators, and making things easier for everyone involved. To help achieve this, we’ve promoted experienced leaders who have been instrumental in building Xbox, and also brought on new talent to drive innovation.

As we work to improve the business, we’re focusing on our core priorities. This means we’ll be removing features that don’t fit our future direction. Specifically, we’re ending support for Copilot on both mobile devices and gaming consoles, and will no longer be developing those versions.

Look, as a gamer, I’m really hoping Xbox steps up its game. They need to be quicker with updates and improvements, and really listen to what players and developers want. It feels like there’s been some disconnect there. Today, they announced some promotions and brought in some fresh faces, which is cool. It seems like they’re trying to strike a balance between keeping the people who built Xbox strong and bringing in new ideas to move things forward, and that’s exactly what the business needs right now.

— Asha (@asha_shar) May 5, 2026

Xbox is bringing on four executives from CoreAI as part of a company restructuring. Jared Palmer, who previously held leadership positions at both CoreAI and GitHub, will be joining as a technical staff member focused on product development, engineering, tools for developers, and the underlying infrastructure.

Xbox has announced several key leadership changes. Tim Allen, formerly of CoreAI and GitHub where he led design and research, is now heading up Xbox design. Jonathan McKay, who previously led growth for ChatGPT at OpenAI, will be Xbox’s head of growth. Evan Chaki, a general manager from CoreAI, will lead a new engineering team focused on proactive support. Finally, David Schloss, previously with Instacart, will oversee Xbox’s subscription services and cloud gaming.

Two long-time leaders are leaving Microsoft. Kevin Gammill, who oversaw the user experience, game creation, and publishing platforms for Xbox, is one of them.

Roanne Sones, a Microsoft executive who leads the Xbox devices and ecosystem team, will be taking a leave of absence after the summer and then transition into an advisory position. She has worked at Microsoft for 24 years.

This week’s changes aren’t the first big decisions Sharma has made since becoming head of Xbox. She recently lowered the price of Game Pass Ultimate after an internal memo revealed it had become too costly. She’s also hinted at a new collaboration between Xbox and Discord.

Read More

2026-05-05 23:19