Microsoft promotes Judson Althoff to lead commercial business

MSDW Insight: Althoff's new role show's Microsoft's need for intentional execution at a time of uncertainty for various interest groups.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has named the company’s global sales leader Judson Althoff as CEO of Microsoft’s commercial business. The move will coincide with Nadella’s renewed focus on engineering priorities.

Nadella wrote in an open letter:

Our success depends on enabling commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to change the frontier of how they operate. To accelerate this, we will increasingly need to bring together sales, marketing, operations, and engineering to drive growth and strengthen our position as the partner of choice for AI transformation.

CMO Takeshi Numoto will report to Althoff. Microsoft’s operations organization will also now report to Althoff. His overall leadership team will reportedly span engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance. 

Nadella will also be working with engineering leaders on achieving their technical ambitions as part of “this generational platform shift,” he wrote. With Althoff leading the commercial organization, Microsoft can focus on its existing performance while “building the new frontier”. 

Althoff has spent nine years leading the global sales organization. He was previously president of Microsoft North America. He has been visible in key partnerships and customer wins in recent years like Mercedes-Benz, Boeing, Databricks, Wells Fargo, and SAP, among many others.

When Microsoft began its new fiscal year in July 2025 and announced a restructuring of the partner-focused MCAPS program, Althoff was on a two-month sabbatical.