Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promises a completely new Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has declared that Microsoft will become a completely new company, effective immediately.

That's the only way the company can keep up with the sweeping PR promises laid out in Nadella's latest article.

The irony is hard to miss for anyone who remembers Microsoft's long history of locking entire industries into its ecosystem: Windows, Office, Azure, GitHub, and everything orbiting them. Even LinkedIn, the company's B2B network, is known for burying external links to keep users on the platform, even when that means hiding sources and turning the site into a closed-off sales channel.

Now Nadella is warning about "extractive" tech partnerships and talking up corporate sovereignty in the AI era. It's a strange pitch coming from the company that helped define digital lock-in.

To top it off, Nadella is echoing some of the more outlandish promises from the AI hype cycle, like the idea that AI will compress drug development from twelve years to one, as if clinical trials and regulatory reviews were just minor paperwork. For anyone who still saw Nadella as a sober voice in the AI debate, this latest post should raise some questions.