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There’s a reason you shouldn’t call Microsoft’s latest strategy an “agentic OS,” and Pavan Davuluri learned it the hard way. In late 2025, shortly after publicly embracing the term to describe the future of Windows, the company’s Executive Vice President of Windows + Devices faced a swift and biting backlash from customers. The message was clear: users still want an operating system that serves them, not one that feels like it’s being handed over to a fleet of autonomous digital workers. Yet Davuluri, a nearly 26-year Microsoft veteran who rose through the ranks from intern to lead the company’s most important platform, hasn’t abandoned the vision—he’s simply changed the vocabulary. As Microsoft navigates what GeekWire has dubbed its “Microsoft 2.5” era, Davuluri finds himself playing a delicate balancing act: steering Windows toward a future increasingly populated by AI agents while ensuring the billion-plus human users who rely on the OS every day don’t feel like second-class citizens. His solution is elegantly simple in framing, even if the engineering is profoundly complex. Windows, he insists, will keep serving human users as it always has—it will just now also accommodate a new kind of workload that happens to be powered by artificial intelligence. “The user of Windows going forward will continue to be users… but it’s also going to add these agentic workloads,” he said recently, carefully choosing his words to emphasize continuity over disruption.
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To understand what that means in practice, you need to look beyond the visible interface and dig into the foundational plumbing of the operating system. Davuluri’s team is building what he calls low-level “primitives”—the fundamental building blocks that govern how Windows handles security, identity, governance, observability, and performance when it comes to natively building and running AI agents. These aren’t the flashy user-facing features that get demoed on stage at product launches; they’re the invisible under-the-hood changes that will determine whether agents can operate safely, reliably, and effectively on a Windows machine. This means rethinking everything from the file system to PowerShell, the command-line tool beloved by developers and system administrators. It also means reimagining how agents are authenticated: Windows will soon assign agents a local identity or a cloud-provisioned one backed by Microsoft Entra, allowing these digital assistants to access resources without compromising user privacy or security. There’s also an early preview of a technology called Microsoft Execution Containers, which effectively runs untrusted agent code in sandboxes and virtual machines to prevent malicious activity from spreading through the system. The strategic bet here is that these backend capabilities, rather than new visual aesthetics or redesigned menus, will define the next era of computing. Davuluri is betting on substance over style, on the quiet infrastructure that makes the intelligent experiences possible. It’s a significant departure from previous Windows eras, where the focus was often on the user interface and usability, but the thinking is sound: you can’t have a future where agents are woven into the fabric of daily productivity without first building a secure, reliable foundation for them to operate within.
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Leading this transformation requires a particular management philosophy, and Davuluri has distilled his approach into four guiding principles that reflect both his engineering roots and his awareness of past Windows missteps. The first is maintaining what he calls “customer obsession”—a reminder that no matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, the end user always comes first. The second is treating Windows as a complete end-to-end system, a “full stack” perspective that considers hardware, software, cloud services, and AI as interconnected parts of a single whole rather than separate silos. The third is focusing on complete user experiences and workflows instead of feature checklists, which represents a subtle but crucial shift in how Microsoft prioritizes its development efforts. Finally, Davuluri has committed to building Windows “openly and transparently,” with clearer communication about plans and priorities. That last principle is particularly significant given the criticism Microsoft has faced over the years for opaque testing processes and surprising changes that caught users off guard. Shortly after his promotion, Davuluri publicly acknowledged that Windows needed to improve its quality and reliability standards and outlined specific changes—including fixing the Windows Insider test program and addressing long-standing annoyances like the inability to reposition the taskbar. The response from longtime Windows users has been notably positive, a reminder that sometimes the most appreciated updates are the ones that simply make the system feel more polished and responsive to user needs.
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The challenge of managing Windows becomes even more daunting when you consider the sheer diversity of its user base. Over a billion people use Windows across every conceivable context: gamers pushing hardware to its limits, enterprise IT departments managing fleets of workstations, developers building next-generation applications, and productivity-focused users who just want to get their work done. “There is no one single sort of ring for a billion-plus users on the platform,” Davuluri acknowledged, rejecting the idea that a one-size-fits-all approach can work for such a vast and varied audience. Instead, he advocates for a dual strategy that distinguishes between “things that lift all boats”—improvements that benefit every Windows user regardless of how they interact with the system—and “things that we have to go do that are specific and unique to each of our sets of users based on how they primarily or typically use the device.” This smart segmentation recognizes that the value proposition of Windows differs dramatically depending on the user. A gamer cares about performance and graphics capabilities, an enterprise user cares about security and manageability, and a developer cares about tooling and flexibility. By focusing on outcomes rather than individual features, Davuluri is trying to ensure that Windows feels tailored to each major use case while still improving the platform as a whole. It’s an ambitious goal that requires constant communication with different user communities, a broad understanding of varied workflows, and the ability to prioritize effectively across multiple competing demands.
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One question that has followed Microsoft since the original Surface launched in 2012 is why the company remains in the hardware business at all. The official answer then was that Microsoft needed to build its own PCs to create reference designs and innovative form-factor examples for other Windows manufacturers. That rationale has evolved over the years, and while it’s debatable whether current Surface devices meaningfully outperform their competitors on specs or design, Davuluri makes a compelling case for why Microsoft must stay in the hardware game. “Full-stack thinking,” he explains, requires that the company maintains a hand in hardware design to understand how software, silicon, cloud services, and physical devices interact. Surface plays a critical role in developing platform abstractions, incubating support for technologies like pen input, facial recognition, and neural-processing units that later spread across the broader Windows ecosystem. It’s a perspective that makes sense coming from a leader with a heavily hardware-focused background—Davuluri previously served as General Manager of Surface and Corporate Vice President of Windows Silicon & Systems Integration. While Microsoft’s attempt to create a distinct category of “Copilot+” AI PCs didn’t gain the traction the company hoped for, it hasn’t abandoned the search for AI-centric reasons to choose a Windows device. Davuluri and his team have increasingly promoted the notion of “unmetered intelligence,” arguing that running AI models locally on PCs offers advantages over cloud-based services, including privacy, speed, and the ability to work without connection.
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Looking ahead, the next chapter in this evolution is taking shape with the upcoming rollout of new PCs built on Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform, scheduled for this fall. Microsoft is preparing the Surface Laptop Ultra, optimized specifically for RTX Spark, and targeting it squarely at creators, developers, and AI builders. The hope is that these tech-savvy early adopters will populate the ecosystem with a new category of emerging users—agents—who will increasingly act as the customers of Windows itself. It’s a fascinating future where the operating system serves both humans and digital assistants, and Davuluri is positioning Microsoft to lead that transition. But he’s careful not to repeat the mistakes of the past, emphasizing that Windows will continue to be a human-centered platform even as it evolves to accommodate this new kind of workload. The balance requires a deep understanding of both the technology and the people who use it, and Davuluri seems determined to maintain that equilibrium. After nearly three decades at Microsoft, he has seen the company navigate multiple platform shifts, from the desktop internet era to cloud computing to mobile. Each transition brought its own challenges and opportunities, and this AI moment is no different. What makes this one unique, though, is the scale and speed of change—and the fact that for the first time, computers are being built to serve beings other than their human operators. Davuluri doesn’t claim to have all the answers, and the path ahead will certainly be bumpy. But his commitment to connecting the technical complexity of building an agent-ready Windows with the simple, human reality of the people who just want to get things done may prove to be the most important contribution a Windows leader can offer in this era.
