Satya Nadella’s career rise, from computer science student to turning Microsoft into a $3 trillion titan as CEO

Upbringing and education

Satya Narayana Nadella was born in Hyderabad, India in 1967.

His father was a civil servant and his mother was a professor of the ancient language Sanskrit.

From a young age, Nadella wanted to be a professional cricket player, and played in school. However, he realized that his athletic talent was outmatched by his passion for science and technology.

Nadella received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in 1988. “I always knew I wanted to build things,” he once said.

The institution didn’t have a comprehensive computer science program, so he traveled to the US to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and graduated in 1990.

He later received an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Trouble at Microsoft

In the early 2010s, Microsoft was running into trouble.

On the PC side, Windows 8 was a disaster, the iPhone and Android were outrunning Windows phones by leaps and bounds, and Bing just couldn’t make a dent in Google’s search dominance.

The company was facing an antitrust suit from the European Union and its stock price kept dropping.

In August 2013, an embattled Ballmer announced his departure, sparking a search for a new CEO. The search committee included Ballmer and Gates.

Leadership style

Nadella’s approach to leadership was credited with reforming the company’s culture.

Many workers are fond of his leadership style, which emphasizes learning and making mistakes as a hedge against overconfidence and arrogance.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a top executive or a first-line seller — he has exactly the same quality of listening,” Microsoft executive vice president Jean-Philippe Courtois has said.

Personal life

Nadella, 57, and his wife, Anu, have had three children and live in Bellevue, Lake Washington.

Their oldest son, Zain, was born with severe cerebral palsy and required specialized care. He died in 2022, aged 26.

“Becoming a father of a son with special needs was the turning point in my life that has shaped who I am today,” Nadella wrote in a 2017 essay on LinkedIn.

He called Zain “the joy of our family, whose strength and warmth both inspire and motivate me to keep pushing the boundaries of what technology can do.”

Nadella has said the experience has encouraged him to lead with empathy, telling Good Housekeeping “it has had a profound impact on how I think, lead and relate to people.”

Nadella’s acquisitions spree

Under Nadella, Microsoft has made some of its biggest acquisitions, including the $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016, the $7.5 billion acquisition of code-sharing site GitHub in 2018, and the $69 billion deal with video games publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023.

Nadella has said he has two main criteria when eyeing acquisitions: what value Microsoft can add and how much financial sense it makes.

What’s next

Nadella’s been busy. And investors love it: From 2014 to 2015, his first year, Microsoft stock jumped 14%.

But over the past decade, it’s soared to new heights, and Microsoft started this year by knocking Apple off the top spot to become the world’s most valuable public company and becoming only the second to exceed a $3 trillion valuation. Apple has since regained the number one spot, but both milestones were highly notable.

Nadella’s biggest move in recent years has been investing billions in OpenAI.

During the week of leadership chaos at OpenAI, Nadella stuck firm to ousted CEO Sam Altman, offering him a job at Microsoft. This provided crucial leverage for Altman to reclaim his CEO position while cementing Microsoft as an essential partner for the pioneering AI company.

Microsoft is also making its own mark with a generative “AI companion” called Copilot to be integrated into its suite of apps. It’s a bet on a future in which every person and organization has their own personal AI assistant to handle mundane tasks.

Vodafone and Microsoft also have a partnership to bring generative AI, digital and cloud services to European and African markets.

January 31, 2024: This story was updated to clarify that the specific figures associated with Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI haven’t been officially confirmed.