Connect with us

Published

on

Microsoft is giving LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky a bigger job, expanding his role to include oversight of Office productivity software, CNBC has learned.

Roslansky, who took over LinkedIn five years ago, is becoming executive vice president of Office, reporting to Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s executive vice president for experiences and devices, according to a person familiar with the matter. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella informed employees about the change in an email on Wednesday, said the person, who asked not to be named because the email was internal.

In his role as LinkedIn CEO, Roslansky will continue to report to Nadella, the person said.

LinkedIn, which Microsoft acquired in 2016 for $27 billion, will keep operating as a subsidiary, after generating more than $17 billion in revenue over the past year. Roslansky joined LinkedIn in 2009 and previously worked at Yahoo.

In 2022, Microsoft rebranded its Office 365 productivity software bundle, which includes applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, to Microsoft 365. In addition to overseeing those products, Roslansky’s portfolio will also include the M365 Copilot app, which lets users edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Jha’s group released the app in 2020.

“Office is one of the most iconic product suites in history,” Roslansky wrote in a LinkedIn post. “It has shaped how the world works, literally. The reach and impact of Office are unmatched. I’m coming into this role in a new, exciting era. Productivity, connection, and AI are converging at scale. Both Office and LinkedIn are used daily by professionals globally, and I’m looking forward to redefining ourselves in this new world.”

As part of the organizational change, Microsoft said Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president for business and industry Copilot products, and his team will move to Jha’s unit. They were previously part of Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie’s cloud and artificial intelligence group.

Lamanna supervises Dynamics 365 sales and customer service products that compete with Salesforce, as well as the Copilot Studio tool for easily building artificial intelligence agents.

In December, Nadella said that AI agents might become the way that people eventually interact with software systems that were designed for use inside large organizations.

“When was the last time any of us really went to a business application?” he told investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley on their podcast. He said the company pays for a bunch of cloud software applications, but “we hardly use them and somebody in the org is sort of inputting data into it.”

“In the AI age, the intensity goes up because all that data now is easy, right?” Nadella said.

The company’s Productivity and Business Processes segment, anchored by Microsoft 365 subscriptions and LinkedIn, has turned more profitable in the past decade. The unit’s operating margin in the fiscal third quarter exceeded 58%, compared with 33% in 2017. Revenue was up 10% from a year earlier.

Continue Reading

Technology

Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns after viral Coldplay kiss-cam controversy

Published

on

By

Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns after viral Coldplay kiss-cam controversy

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 12, 2021 in London, England.

Simone Joyner | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Astronomer, the technology company that faced backlash after its CEO was allegedly caught in an affair at a Coldplay concert, said the CEO has resigned, the company announced Saturday.

“Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted,” the company said in a statement. “The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.”

Byron was shown on a big screen at a Coldplay concert on Wednesday with his arms around the company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot. Byron, who is married with children, immediately hid when the couple was shown on screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A concert attendee’s video of the affair went viral.

In May, Astronomer announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

Byron’s resignation comes after Astronomer said Friday that it had launched a “formal investigation” into the matter, and the CEO was placed on administrative leave.

“Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI,” the company said in its Saturday statement. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells an additional $12.94 million worth of shares

Published

on

By

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells an additional .94 million worth of shares

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks during a news conference in Taipei on May 21, 2025.

I-hwa Cheng | Afp | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold 75,000 shares on Friday, valued at about $12.94 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Friday’s sale is part of a plan adopted in March for Huang to sell up to 6 million shares of the leading artificial intelligence company. Earlier this week, Huang sold 225,000 shares of the chipmaker, totaling about $37 million, according to a separate SEC filing. The CEO began trading stock per the plan last month.

Surging demand for AI and the graphics processing units that power large language models has significantly boosted Huang’s net worth and pushed Nvidia’s market capitalization beyond $4 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company.

Nvidia announced this week that it expects to resume sales of its H20 chips to China soon, following signals from the Trump administration that it would approve export licenses. Earlier this year, U.S. officials had stated that Nvidia would require special permission to ship the chips, which are specifically designed for the Chinese market.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Huang said during a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing that he wants to sell chips more advanced than the H20 to China at some point.

Continue Reading

Technology

Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Published

on

By

Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Marco Bello | Getty Images

The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.

The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”

A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.

“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.

Read more CNBC tech news

The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.

It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.

Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.

Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.

President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.

In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”

Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.

WATCH: Trump’s crypto plan

Trump's crypto reserve plan is 'incredibly bullish' for crypto as a whole, asset manager says

Continue Reading

Trending