By Ashley Stewart
Publication Date: 2025-11-19 18:09:00
Satya Nadella believes Microsoft needs to completely rethink its business model for the AI era, and he’s turning to an executive who influenced the company’s cloud reboot 15 years ago.
Nadella tapped Rolf Harms as an advisor on AI economics to help with the ambitious plan, according to a memo the CEO sent top Microsoft executives this month.
Harms wrote the white paper “Economics of the Cloud” in 2010 that helped force a cultural reckoning at Microsoft and pave the way for the company’s cloud-computing success.
“We need to rapidly rethink the new economics of AI across the company — just as we once did with the cloud,” Nadella wrote this month in his message, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider. “This platform shift is all about building a new AI factory and family of Copilots and agents that drive diffusion and usage across the full stack.”
AI companies are facing mounting questions over whether massive infrastructure investments will pay…
