Satya Nadella says he is ‘haunted’ by fears of Microsoft losing relevance in AI era

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has admitted he is “haunted” by the possibility that the company may fail to stay relevant in the age of artificial intelligence. Speaking at a recent internal town hall, Nadella responded to an employee question on Microsoft’s changing culture, but his reply also reflected his concerns about the company’s long-term future.

“Some of the biggest businesses we’ve built might not be as relevant going forward,” Nadella said, according to The Verge. He pointed to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as a cautionary example of how even dominant technology firms can quickly fade if they fail to adapt to shifts in computing.

“Our industry is full of case studies of companies that were great once, that just disappeared. I’m haunted by one particular one called DEC,” Nadella explained. DEC was a market leader in the early 1970s, but it was overtaken by rivals such as IBM after missing out on key changes like the Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architecture.

Nadella revealed his personal connection to DEC, noting that his first computer was a DEC VAX and that he once hoped to work there. He also recalled that some engineers who later helped build Microsoft’s Windows NT operating system came from a DEC lab that had been shut down.