From hackathons to leading 11,000 people

Jacob Andreou's story doesn't start in a Manhattan corner office but in university lecture halls. He studied biomedical computing at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, and while still a student, he and his friend Khalid Karim entered practically every hackathon they came across — and won most of them. Their triumph at a hackathon hosted by what was then Facebook, where they designed a personalized shopping app, launched Andreou's career.

In 2015, he joined Snap as a design engineer. Three years later, he was vice president of product, overseeing design, data science, and product strategy. In 2023, he moved to venture capital — at Greylock, he invested in consumer AI startups. Last year, Microsoft recruited him to help build Microsoft AI, at that time still under Mustafa Suleyman's leadership. This March came the turning point: Nadella merged the consumer and enterprise Copilot teams under a single leader, putting Andreou in charge. Today he oversees more than 11,000 people and reports directly to the CEO.

Copilot under pressure: why Microsoft needs change

The numbers don't lie. Of Microsoft 365's 450 million users, only about 20 million pay for premium Copilot features — roughly 4.5%. The consumer chatbot trails far behind ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. GitHub Copilot, once the top AI coding assistant, has been overtaken by Cursor and Anthropic's Claude Code. And in January, Anthropic released Claude Cowork — an agent capable of independently working with Excel, PowerPoint, and other tools, precisely the value proposition Microsoft has built M365 Copilot on.

"This is one of the most intensely competitive environments tech has seen in the last 20 years," Andreou told Fortune. "The technology is moving so quickly that a six to twelve month roadmap doesn't really exist in the way it used to."

Super app, Autopilot, and the end of fragmentation

Andreou's number one priority is unifying the fragmented Copilot tools into a single application. According to Fortune, Microsoft is working on a super app that will combine GitHub Copilot (coding), Copilot chat (conversational AI), and Copilot Cowork (autonomous agents) into one interface. It will also include a feature internally named Autopilot — an agentic workflow designed to compete directly with Claude Cowork.

Users will be able to switch between personal and enterprise Copilot accounts within a single application. The super app is expected to launch by the end of summer 2026.

Proof that the new pace works came early in Andreou's tenure. His team developed Copilot Tasks — an autonomous agent that can independently complete tasks like ordering food or booking meetings. The product was built in just two months. When Andreou tested whether Tasks could order a cheeseburger from McDonald's to his apartment across from Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus — the burger was waiting for him when he got home.

Microsoft changes its culture: 10x developers, hackathons, and Slack

Andreou champions an approach that is unusual at the 51-year-old Microsoft. He promotes so-called 10x developers — programmers who are ten times more productive than their peers. He organizes developer hackathons in Seattle, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Some teams lock themselves in offices and code all day. Ironically, some Microsoft AI teams use the competing Slack instead of their own Microsoft Teams for internal communication — though the company says Andreou's team exclusively uses Teams.

Not everyone embraces the new culture, however. Current and former employees told Fortune that the new regime practically requires twelve-hour workdays, and some people are on the verge of burnout. Others worry that the breakneck development speed risks compliance with internal security standards.

Model independence: Microsoft bets on Anthropic

A major strategic shift is the move away from exclusive reliance on OpenAI. Microsoft invested 3 billion in Sam Altman's startup, but the partnership gradually became strained. After restructuring the deal, Microsoft secured a 27% stake but lost exclusivity — OpenAI can now work with other cloud providers, and Microsoft can use models from other companies.

And that's exactly what it's doing now. Last November, Microsoft invested up to billion in Anthropic and began offering Claude models on Azure. Copilot Cowork, the enterprise agent platform, already runs on Claude models. According to Axios, Microsoft is also exploring hosting open-source models, including China's DeepSeek.

Andreou himself admits that a growing share of everyday tasks can be handled by less powerful but more efficient models — you don't always need the most expensive frontier models like Anthropic Opus 4.8.

Consumption-based pricing, layoffs, and 90 billion in infrastructure

The business model is changing too. Microsoft traditionally charged a fixed license — for example, 0 per month for M365 Copilot. Now it's moving to a hybrid model: a base license with a limited token allowance, plus additional charges for consumption beyond the limit. Copilot Cowork is already billed purely by usage — based on the model used, token count, and agent runtime.

Microsoft is also cutting costs. In April, for the first time in its history, it offered voluntary buyouts to its longest-serving employees — about 7% of the US workforce, roughly 8,750 people, at an expected cost of 00 million.

And it's investing massively. For 2026, Microsoft plans capital expenditures of 90 billion — more than triple the 2024 figure. The money is primarily going to data centers and specialized AI chips. Microsoft AI as a whole is on track for 7 billion in annual revenue, up 123% year over year.

What it means for European businesses and developers

For European companies using Microsoft 365, Andreou's era brings several practical implications. Copilot is now model-agnostic — if your company prefers Claude over GPT, you can choose. This is crucial especially for regulated industries or companies with specific language precision requirements.

Localization continues to improve, though non-English versions still fall short of English quality. The key advantage for European firms remains deep integration with Microsoft 365 — no one else offers such tight AI integration with Excel, Outlook, and Teams in a single package. At the same time, companies should prepare for changing pricing — from fixed licenses to a "pay-as-you-go" model, which can mean higher bills for intensive AI agent usage.

Can Andreou get Microsoft back in the game?

Fortune describes Andreou as a charismatic speaker with irresistible energy — one former colleague compared him to Bill Clinton in his ability to command a room. Fans praise his ability to ship a product in two months and his vision of a unified AI platform. Critics note he still has to prove himself in enterprise software and that his confidence sometimes outruns reality.

One thing is certain: Microsoft has bet on young blood, speed, and the courage to tear down established ways of doing things. In 2026, when the battle for dominance of the AI assistant market is in full swing, it might be the only path back to the top.