Microsoft's CTO on How to Build Enduring Businesses in the AI Era

This week I flew out to Seattle to attend Microsoft's developer conference, Build. Read my full report and Evan Armstrong's analysis.



Kevin Scott is not your average CTO. He says things like “chill” and “shit,” and he wears button-down shirts with funky patterns. Oh yeah, and he builds supercomputers. In his spare time, he likes to do woodworking.

Scott was the first person at Microsoft to recognize the importance of AI and instigated its OpenAI partnership, which has become the single most important strategic move at Microsoft since the dot-com era. 

He's hopeful that in the next two to three years, a model will exist that can "synthesize a Kevin Scott, and virtual Kevin can go be CTO of Microsoft," he said. "All of us have these things in our jobs that we're doing where we're like, man, I could accomplish so much more if I just didn't have to do this annoying thing."

In the meantime, here are a few more tidbits from my conversation with him.