Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, and members of his executive team shared the following communications with employees today.

SATYA NADELLA MESSAGE

Gaming has been part of Microsoft from the start. Flight Simulator shipped before Windows, and you can practically ray‑trace a line from DirectX in the ’90s to the accelerated‑compute era we’re in today.

As we celebrate Xbox’s 25^th year, the opportunity and innovation agenda in front of us is expansive. Today we reach over 500 million monthly active users, are a top publisher across all platforms, and continue to innovate across gaming hardware, content, and community, in service of creators and players everywhere.

I am long on gaming and its role at the center of our consumer ambition, and as we look ahead, I’m excited to share that Asha Sharma will become Executive Vice President and CEO, Microsoft Gaming, reporting to me. Over the last two years at Microsoft, and previously as Chief Operating Officer at Instacart and a Vice President at Meta, Asha has helped build and scale services that reach billions of people and support thriving consumer and developer ecosystems. She brings deep experience building and growing platforms, aligning business models to long-term value, and operating at global scale, which will be critical in leading our gaming business into its next era of growth.

Matt Booty will become Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer, reporting to Asha. Matt’s career reflects a lifelong commitment to games and to the people who make them. Under his leadership, Microsoft Gaming has grown to span nearly 40 studios across Xbox, Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and King, which are home to beloved franchises including Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Candy Crush, and Fallout.

Together, Asha and Matt have the right combination of consumer product leadership and gaming depth to push our platform innovation and content pipeline forward. Last year, Phil Spencer made the decision to retire from the company, and since then we’ve been talking about succession planning. I want to thank Phil for his extraordinary leadership and partnership. Over 38 years at Microsoft, including 12 years leading Gaming, Phil helped transform what we do and how we do it. He expanded our reach across PC, mobile, and cloud; nearly tripled the size of the business; helped shape our strategy through the acquisitions of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Minecraft; and strengthened our culture across our studios and platforms.  I’ve long admired Phil’s unwavering commitment to players, creators, and his team, and I am personally grateful for his leadership and counsel. He will continue working closely with Asha to ensure a smooth transition.

We have extraordinary creative talent across our studios and a global platform that is second to none. I’m excited for how we will capture the opportunity ahead and define what comes next, while staying grounded in what players and creators value.

Please join me in congratulating Asha and Matt on their new roles, and in thanking Phil for everything he has done for Microsoft and for our industry.

PHIL SPENCER MESSAGE

When I walked through Microsoft’s doors as an intern in June of 1988, I could never have imagined the products I’d help build, the players and customers we’d serve, or the extraordinary teams I’d be lucky enough to join. It’s been an epic ride and truly the privilege of a lifetime.

Last fall, I shared with Satya that I was thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life. From that moment, we aligned on approaching this transition with intention, ensuring stability, and strengthening the foundation we’ve built. Xbox has always been more than a business. It’s a vibrant community of players, creators, and teams who care deeply about what we build and how we build it. And it deserves a thoughtful, deliberate plan for the road ahead.

Today marks an exciting new chapter for Microsoft Gaming as Asha Sharma steps into the role of CEO, and I want to be the first to welcome her to this incredible team. Working with her over the past several months has given me tremendous confidence. She brings genuine curiosity, clarity and a deep commitment to understanding players, creators, and the decisions that shape our future. We know this is an important moment for our fans, partners, and team, and we’re committed to getting it right. I’ll remain in an advisory role through the summer to support a smooth handoff.

I’m also grateful for the strength of our studios organization. Matt Booty and our studios teams continue to build an incredible portfolio, and I have full confidence in the leadership and creative momentum across our global studios.  I want to congratulate Matt on his promotion to EVP and Chief Content Officer.

As part of this transition, Sarah Bond has decided to leave Microsoft to begin a new chapter. Sarah has been instrumental during a defining period for Xbox, shaping our platform strategy, expanding Game Pass and cloud gaming, supporting new hardware launches, and guiding some of the most significant moments in our history. I’m grateful for her partnership and the impact she’s had, and I wish her the very best in what comes next.

Most of all, to everyone in Microsoft Gaming, I want to say “thank you.” I’ve learned so much from this team and community, grown alongside you, and been continually inspired by the creativity, courage, and care you bring to players, creators, and to one another every day.

I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together over the last 25 years, and I have complete confidence in all of you and in the opportunities ahead. I’ll be cheering you on in this next chapter as Xbox’s proudest fan and player.

Phil

XBL: P3

ASHA SHARMA MESSAGE

Dear team,

Today I begin my role as CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

I feel two things at once: humility and urgency.

Humility because this team has built something extraordinary over decades. Urgency because gaming is in a period of rapid change, and we need to move with clarity and conviction.

I am stepping into work shaped by generations of artists, engineers, designers, writers, musicians, operators and more who create worlds that have brought joy and deep personal meaning to hundreds of millions of players. The level of craft here is exceptional, and it is amplified by Xbox, which was founded in the belief that the power of games connects people and pushes the industry forward.

Thank you to Phil for his leadership, and to every studio, platform, and operations team that built this foundation. We are stewards of some of the most loved stories and characters in entertainment and bring players and creators together around the fun and community of gaming in entirely new ways.

My first job is simple: understand what makes this work and protect it.

That starts with three commitments.

First, great games.

Everything begins here. We must have great games beloved by players before we do anything.  Unforgettable characters, stories that make us feel, innovative game play, and creative excellence. We will empower our studios, invest in iconic franchises, and back bold new ideas. We will take risks. We will enter new categories and markets where we can add real value, grounded in what players care about most.

I promoted Matt Booty in honor of this commitment. He understands the craft and the challenges of building great games, has led teams that deliver award-winning work, and has earned the trust of game developers across the industry.

Second, the return of Xbox.

We will recommit to our core Xbox fans and players, those who have invested with us for the past 25 years, and to the developers who build the expansive universes and experiences that are embraced by players across the world.

We will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console which has shaped who we are. It connects us to the players and fans who invest in Xbox, and to the developers who build ambitious experiences for it.

Gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware. As we expand across PC, mobile, and cloud, Xbox should feel seamless, instant, and worthy of the communities we serve. We will break down barriers so developers can build once and reach players everywhere without compromise.

Third, future of play.

We are witnessing the reinvention of play.

To meet the moment, we will invent new business models and new ways to play by leaning into what we already have: iconic teams, characters, and worlds that people love. But we will not treat those worlds as static IP to milk and monetize. We will build a shared platform and tools that empower developers and players to create and share their own stories.

As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.

The next 25 years belong to the teams who dare to build something surprising, something no one else is willing to try, and have the patience to see it through. We have done this before, and I am here to help us do it again. I want to return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place. It will require us to relentlessly question everything, revisit processes, protect what works, and be brave enough to change what does not.

Thank you for welcoming me into this journey.

Asha

MATT BOOTY MESSAGE

I read Phil’s note with much gratitude. He has been a steady champion for game creators and our studio teams, and I’ve learned so much from his leadership over the years. All our games have benefited from his foundational support. I’m also grateful to Satya for his ongoing commitment to gaming and holding a vision of how it can connect back to the larger company.

Looking forward, I’m excited to partner with Asha as our next CEO. Our first conversations centered on her commitment to making great games and the role that plays in our overall success. She asks questions, pushes for clarity, and wants our choices grounded in player and developer needs. That mindset matters as the industry around us is changing quickly: how players engage, how games are made, and how business models and platforms evolve.

We have good reasons to believe in what’s ahead. This organization and its franchises have navigated change for decades, and our strength comes from teams who know how to adapt and keep delivering. That confidence is grounded in a strong pipeline of established franchises, new bets we believe in, and clear player demand for what we are building.

My focus is on supporting the teams and leaders we have in place and creating the conditions for them to do their best work. To be clear, there are no organizational changes underway for our studios.

Thanks for everything you do for players and for each other.

Matt

The post Asha Sharma named EVP and CEO, Microsoft Gaming appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, and members of his executive team shared the following communications with employees today. SATYA NADELLA MESSAGE Gaming has been part of Microsoft from the start. Flight Simulator shipped before Windows, and you can practically ray‑trace a line from DirectX in the ’90s to the accelerated‑compute era we’re in today. As…
The post Asha Sharma named EVP and CEO, Microsoft Gaming appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More

In 2020, Microsoft announced a moonshot commitment to become carbon negative by 2030 — accelerating work across our company to advance the partnerships and technologies needed to advance sustainability for our businesses, our customers and the world. A key milestone on this journey was our aim to match 100% of our annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy(1) by 2025. Today, we are pleased to share that Microsoft has achieved this milestone(2). This progress helps drive investment into the power systems where we operate, expand clean energy supply and advance broader energy innovation.

Over a decade of investment: 40 gigawatts of new renewable energy contracted

What began in 2013 with a single 110 megawatt (MW) power purchase agreement (PPA) in Texas — a small first step to demonstrate how corporate procurement could scale clean energy(3) — has evolved into one of the largest clean energy portfolios in the world. This first deal not only supported Microsoft’s early cloud services but also set in motion a decade of commercial partnerships and learning-by-doing that served to demonstrate how corporate demand for advanced energy solutions can help to achieve a more affordable and sustainable power system, while supporting reliability for customers.

Since our carbon negative announcement in 2020, we have contracted 40 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy supply across 26 countries, working with more than 95 utilities and developers across 400+ contracts and counting. To put that amount in perspective — that’s enough energy to power about 10 million US homes. Of that contracted volume, 19 GW are now online, delivering new clean energy supply to the power grid, while the remainder are slated to come online over the next five years.

Our new renewable energy procurement continues to deliver significant environmental benefits, including the reduction of Microsoft’s reported Scope 2 carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 25 million tons(4) and the mobilization of billions of dollars’ worth of private investment in regions where we operate.

Catalyzing market investment through bankable, repeatable models

Microsoft is among the early pioneers in developing technical and commercial practices that help advance bankable, repeatable and scalable procurement tools suitable for each market. Our clean energy purchasing navigates a global patchwork of power market designs, requiring creativity in how we balance cost, time to market and project sizing in our portfolio across planning, contracting and management.

Our work has benefited from a broad coalition of partners helping to build this market together. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, more than 200 global corporations collectively purchased nearly 200 GW of clean energy around the world since 2008. Working alongside other clean energy buyers — as well as hundreds of utilities, manufacturers, financiers, developers and engineers — we have helped reduce transaction costs, expand developer access to financing and streamline procurement approaches that other buyers can adopt.

This global flywheel of partnership, investment, technology and policy innovation is expected to continue to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of investment into infrastructure and jobs. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, when Microsoft sends a clear market signal for world-class, first-of-a-kind technologies and infrastructure, the power sector rises to the challenge. Our procurement over the past decade has demonstrated that partnerships, communities and innovation are essential ingredients that help to accelerate first-of-a-kind technologies and infrastructure at scale.

Scaling partnerships to scale infrastructure

Critical to Microsoft’s success in expanding digital infrastructure and supporting our local communities is our ability to build trusted partnerships with the over 95 global energy suppliers that support our clean energy portfolio. We have sourced clean energy through multiple requests for proposal or information, bilateral engagements and clean tariffs to evaluate over 5,000 unique carbon-free energy projects around the world.

Today, Microsoft has six energy company partners with which we have over 1 GW of contracted renewable energy capacity, and more than 20 energy supplier partners where each partner has at least five separate renewable energy projects with Microsoft — evidence of the durable, repeatable relationships necessary to scale clean energy. Combining scale with speed, Microsoft’s landmark 10.5 GW framework agreement with Brookfield sends a long-term, 2030 demand signal to the market that enables developers to raise funding more efficiently, bolster supply chains, hire engineers and construct world-class energy infrastructure.

Putting communities first

Our renewable energy procurement has mobilized billions of dollars in private investment, supported thousands of jobs across the communities where we operate and delivered meaningful co-benefits. Through partnerships with developers and nonprofit organizations, we’ve worked to embed community-driven benefits into our energy portfolio. These benefits include robust infrastructure, economic inclusion and support for community-focused organizations.

Our support for communities shows up in projects like our 500 MW PPA with Sol Systems, or our 250 MW PPA with Volt Energy Utility that provided local training and jobs, as well as grants to community nonprofit organizations and habitat restoration. We’ve also signed over 1.5 GW of distributed solar, bringing clean energy directly into hundreds of communities around the world. Landmark agreements like our 500 MW offtake with Pivot Energy, or our 270 MW offtake with PowerTrust are expected to foster employment, energy cost savings and grid resilience in communities across the United States, Mexico and Brazil. More details on the above examples and our approach to community benefits in clean energy agreements can be found in a dedicated Microsoft whitepaper.

Innovation unlocks new markets and pathways

Microsoft’s clean energy procurement continues to play an important role in catalyzing technical, commercial and regulatory innovation. Our commercial efforts have helped lower barriers to entry into new markets and expand access into multi-technology contracts that accelerate decarbonization.

In Japan, Microsoft signed one of the first corporate PPAs in the country’s restructured power market. Our 25 MW, 20-year agreement with Shizen represents the first single-asset virtual PPA executed in the country, which helped pave the way to over 2GWs of corporate procurement since 2024, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Alongside opening new markets, we have structured several multi-technology offtakes in nascent markets for corporate procurement. In India, Microsoft purchased a combined 437 MW solar/wind hybrid offtake from Renew, where our projects will support energy access and rural electrification. In Microsoft’s home state of Washington, our datacenters in Douglas County are supplied by 100% carbon-free energy, as we leverage a creative blend of new wind power and hydropower storage to deliver around-the-clock clean energy.

Looking forward to 2030 and beyond

In 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) described a new “Age of Electricity,” marked by accelerating electricity demand from electric vehicles, air conditioners, data centers and heat pumps. As the world electrifies more of the economy, the demand for affordable, reliable and clean electricity will continue to rise.

Our experience building Microsoft’s clean energy portfolio both reflects and furthers global trends. According to IEA data, since 2000, renewable energy generation has expanded nearly four-fold. In many power markets across the world, clean energy is one of the fast-growing sources of generation, and often the one with the fastest time-to-market. Corporate buyers like Microsoft continue to serve as an important catalyst in driving commercial demand for innovation and infrastructure across the power industry.

As we continue our journey toward becoming carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft will continue to push for an expansive focus on adding all forms of carbon-free electricity solutions, complementing and adding to our portfolio of renewable energy resources. We recognize that the world’s rising electricity needs require a balanced, all-of-the-above decarbonization strategy to meet global economic growth and environmental goals, and our sustainability goals will continue to support this approach moving forward. Such a strategy requires a broader set of carbon-free energy and grid-enabling technologies, including nuclear energy, next-generation grid infrastructure and carbon capture technology. Just as renewable energy was a relatively small part of global energy grids in 2013 when we signed our first PPA, today many advanced energy technologies remain early in their development but offer significant promise to accelerate progress towards an affordable, reliable and sustainable energy future.

Microsoft has already taken early steps to support the advancement of a broader set of carbon-free energy technologies as we partner with Helion and Constellation Energy on a 50 MW fusion project in Washington state and work with Constellation to restart the 835 MW Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania. Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund has allocated $806 million of capital to 67 investees, with 38% directed toward Energy Systems — advancing carbon-free power and fuels, energy storage and energy management solutions.

We welcome continued collaboration with our power sector partners to bring these innovations to market and incorporate new technology tools in the process to accelerate their development.

We will continue to build and leverage new AI-driven tools to design, permit and deploy new power technologies that help expand and more efficiently operate the electricity grid, bringing more clean energy online faster. This work is exemplified by our recently announced collaborations with Idaho National Laboratory and the Midcontinental System Operator, among other examples.

And as we advance innovative energy technologies, we recognize that standards must evolve alongside innovation. That is why we will continue participating in industry forums that strengthen carbon accounting frameworks — so that our clean energy procurement is measured with greater accuracy and delivers real world emissions reductions, with a continued focus on maintaining the high level of integrity that the world has come to expect from Microsoft.

Our carbon negative commitment remains a call to action — for Microsoft, our customers and the broader technology sector — to invest in an affordable, reliable and sustainable power system. As we look toward 2030, that call to action has never been clearer.

Gratitude — and momentum for the work ahead

Today’s milestone represents a shared achievement among the utility professionals, clean energy developers, community leaders, technology innovators and forward-thinking policymakers who continue the deployment of renewable energy. Meeting today’s milestone shows what partnership can deliver in bringing big ideas to life. The future of carbon-free energy is one that we will create – together.

As Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Melanie Nakagawa leads the company’s targets to be carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste by 2030. She brings deep experience at the intersection of policy, business, and technology to advance climate and sustainability solutions globally.

As President of Cloud Operations + Innovation at Microsoft, Noelle Walsh leads the organization that powers the global Microsoft Cloud. She oversees the company’s physical cloud infrastructure and operations, with a charter focused on safety, security, availability, sustainability, and competitive infrastructure growth—bringing decades of global operational leadership.

Footnotes

1. Renewable energy is defined within Microsoft’s fact sheet https://aka.ms/SustainabilityFactsheet2025, which represents FY24 data.
2. To date, Microsoft’s renewable energy target includes two primary categories: renewable energy from contracted projects and grid mix. The first is renewable energy delivered under PPAs or similar long-term contracting mechanisms, generally for new projects where our financial involvement in the project’s development is critical for its success. This category represents more than 90% of the renewable energy applied to achieve our 2025 target.The second category is “grid mix” – renewable energy supported via our standard utility relationships and rates, inclusive of policy programs such as renewable portfolio standards and state and utility decarbonization goals.Our 2025 100% renewable target does not include purchases from short-term, so-called “spot market” renewable energy credits (RECs) sourced from operational clean energy projects.With the above in mind, Microsoft leverages a straightforward formula to determine our 100% renewable energy metric on a global, annual basis. We update and further detail the methodology and assumptions behind this formula in our annual sustainability reports:
3. Clean energy— also referred to in this blog as carbon free energy —is defined within Microsoft’s fact sheet https://aka.ms/SustainabilityFactsheet2025, which represents FY24 data.
4. Reduction of reported Scope 2 emissions are calculated between FY20-25, the cumulative difference between location based and market-based emissions, excluding the use of short-term, so-called “spot market” RECs

The post A milestone achievement in our journey to carbon negative appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

In 2020, Microsoft announced a moonshot commitment to become carbon negative by 2030 — accelerating work across our company to advance the partnerships and technologies needed to advance sustainability for our businesses, our customers and the world. A key milestone on this journey was our aim to match 100% of our annual global electricity consumption…
The post A milestone achievement in our journey to carbon negative appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More