Microsoft Corp., which is struggling to bring data centers online faster to meet demand for its artificial intelligence products, has hired an engineering chief who kept Facebook’s infrastructure running.
Jay Parikh will join the senior leadership team and report to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella.
“There are very few leaders in our industry with Jay’s experience in leading teams through the rapid growth and scale required to support today’s largest Internet businesses,” Nadella said in an internal email Thursday, which Redmond , the Washington-based company also posted.” Corporate Blog.
Parikh, who most recently ran cloud security startup Lacework, previously led engineering at Facebook and now Meta Platform Inc. Nadella said the company would share details on Parikh’s role in the “next few months.”
A Microsoft spokesperson had no immediate comment beyond the CEO’s note.
Parikh joined Facebook in 2009 and spent more than a decade there working on technical infrastructure and data center projects, helping the company grow into the world’s largest social network.
During Parikh’s time there, Meta laid the foundation for more than a dozen data centers around the world. Since many technology companies acquired Microsoft or Amazon.com Inc. Meta has remained one of the few companies capable of building state-of-the-art server farms on a large scale.
Parikh oversaw several other technology projects, including Meta’s efforts in undersea cables and its ill-fated Aquila drone project aimed at delivering wireless internet to rural locations in the US.
Microsoft, which conducts its own subsea cable and data center design projects, is increasingly focusing on infrastructure projects that can help it squeeze more power and efficiency from its networks. Thanks to its partnership with ChatGPIT creator OpenAI, Microsoft is at the forefront of the effort to create tools that rely on generative artificial intelligence. The company is racing to build data centers and chips to support that effort.
On Wednesday, Microsoft forecast slower growth in its key Azure cloud business as the company struggles to run data centers fast enough to meet demand.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
