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New Delhi: Artificial intelligence is reshaping how products are built, and Microsoft—a bellwether for technology adoption among businesses—is at the centre of this shift. AI agents are helping companies reduce development time, effort, and cost, Aparna Chennapragada, corporate vice-president and global chief product officer (CPO) at Microsoft, said in an interview withMint.
An example is homegrown IT services firm Persistent Systems, she said, which used Microsoft’s enterprise AI agents to build a new contract management system (CMS).
“We worked closely with Persistent on how to reduce the time gaps within its contract management system. Our AI agents shortened manual approval times. This sort of prototyping is where AI is dramatically reducing the time and resources consumed for a business,” she said.
Most other IT services firms, such as TCS, Infosys, and others, also use Microsoft’s AI agents depending on client demand.
This, she said, is an apt representation of how AI is impacting work at Microsoft, and “changing the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of building a product” at one of the world’s largest companies. “The very definition of a product today is built around intelligence. The next big shift is the change of the primary interface of a product from voice to natural language, which is playing out in our AI personal computers (PCs). The way of building a product itself has changed—rather than being bracketed into hardware or software, we’re starting with what prompts it should be able to answer. Then, we decide the rest,” she said.
“Even with teams spread globally, AI is easing collaboration efforts. This is great for teams based far apart such as the US and India—and makes sharing resources and notes more seamless for all,” she added.
Global collaboration
A Silicon Valley veteran, this was Chennapragada’s first interview in India as part of her role at Microsoft. The executive spent over 12 years at Google before joining Microsoft exactly two years ago on this day. She is also a member of the board of directors at eBay, one of the oldest global online marketplaces. At the Satya Nadella-helmed company, Chennapragada is in charge of ‘inventing new AI products’.
As AI continues to disrupt businesses globally, Microsoft has largely succeeded in retaining investor and analyst optimism—even as AI products have not taken off at a rapid pace. At the time of writing, Microsoft remained the world’s second-largest company behind Nvidia, with a valuation of $3.77 trillion. The company’s Windows, Office and 365 suites account for more than 1 billion active devices globally, making Microsoft an important foundational technology provider for India’s $280-billion tech services and outsourcing industry.
However, in recent times, the company’s partnership with AI’s flagbearer, OpenAI, has come under scrutiny, including fundamental differences of approach between the two companies. Investors have raised questions around the adoption of Microsoft’s ‘Copilot Plus AI PCs’ strategy—an effort from the company to place generative AI applications into every device, browser and application under its ambit. Barring Apple, Microsoft’s share price has seen the slowest year-on-year growth on US stock exchange, Nasdaq.
Speaking about the future, Chennapragada said that the company is “looking to bring AI to where the users are—and not the other way around.”
Strategic focus
“People spend a lot of time in Teams, Outlook and the Office apps. We’re trying to get the best of our AI in those places where people already are. Our next goal is to get the M365 Copilot AI assistant to everyone for various tasks. Finally, we’re also looking to build a team of agents that can be present with an employee at work from day one, no matter what they do,” she said.
She clarified that Microsoft is not fixated on building its own foundational large language model (LLM). “We continue to retain a very strong partnership with OpenAI. We’re also working on our own foundational models for consumer-facing Copilot operations. Azure remains a key infrastructure provider for all AI applications.”
Analysts have largely offered a long-term bullish outlook despite the company’s slower-than-competition approach. In May, Sundar Pichai-led Google went all-out on AI for both consumers and enterprises, leading its share prices to surge nearly 35% in the past year.
On 12 July, Keith Weiss, head of US software research at brokerage Morgan Stanley, said in an investor note that Microsoft remains at the top of enterprise AI partnerships—such as the work with Persistent Systems that Chennapragada mentioned above.
“Microsoft has been able to maintain its leadership position in terms of core spending intentions and specifically related to capturing share of generative AI spend. Relative to broader software, chief information officers at businesses expect Microsoft to see the highest growth in AI spending from companies—among all the Big Tech firms,” Weiss said, calling this feat “emblematic of the company’s AI leadership position.”
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