Windows 11 is getting a year-long push into "agentic" territory as the executive who shipped Windows 3.1 and scaled Windows 10 to a billion devices spends his final months at Microsoft trying to remake the OS for AI.
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's Executive Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, announced his departure after 35 years in an internal memo. But he's not leaving until June 30, 2027, and he has a specific plan for that time.
"I will work through the next fiscal year to help reimagine Windows for the agentic era, grow Microsoft 365 services, and bring our One Copilot vision to life," Mehdi wrote in the memo, which he also shared on LinkedIn. The phrase "agentic era" is the key detail. Microsoft has been pouring resources into AI agents, software that acts autonomously on a user's behalf rather than just responding to prompts.
Mehdi's career spans Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s, the launch of Internet Explorer, building Bing from a four-person team into a billion-user search platform, the Xbox One launch, and the Surface Pro line. After Panos Panay's departure in 2023, Mehdi took over Windows and Surface responsibilities. A successor has not been named. Mehdi said it's too early to determine what the leadership structure will look like after he steps away.
"There will be time later to reflect and celebrate, but for now, it's full speed ahead on our mission," Mehdi wrote in an internal email to his team.
His priorities over the next year include unifying Microsoft Copilot across work and personal life, scaling Microsoft 365's consumer business toward 100 million subscriptions, and, the headline item, pushing Windows into the agentic computing era. That means an operating system where applications don't just wait for clicks but act autonomously on the user's behalf.
Mehdi's timeline through June 2027 suggests the work is a multiyear effort that will outlast his tenure.
