Chris Young, the chief of business development at Microsoft, who assisted in the software giant’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, is leaving his position after around four years, the company announced in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.
TakeAway Points:
- Chris Young led the effort to split Microsoft from Intel before joining the business in 2020 from McAfee.
- Young, one of the highest-paid executives at Microsoft, was in charge of the software company’s strategic alliances and venture capital department.
- Meta has invested in data analytics software company Databricks.
Chris Young resigns from Microsoft after 4 years
Microsoft’s head of business development, Chris Young, who helped orchestrate the software giant’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, is resigning from his post after about four years on the job, the company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. No successor was named.
Young joined Microsoft in 2020 after almost three years as CEO of McAfee, where he ran the effort to separate the company from Intel. Previously, he held executive positions at Cisco and RSA.
At Microsoft, Young sat on the company’s senior leadership team alongside CEO Satya Nadella and finance chief Amy Hood. He reported to Nadella. As one of the highest paid Microsoft employees, Young received $12 million in total compensation in the 2024 fiscal year, according to a filing.
Young’s organization included the M12 corporate venture capital unit, which has invested in startups like Innovaccer, Outreach, PsiQuantum, Skedulo and Typeface. In 2023, M12 said that going forward, it would work more closely with Microsoft to better assist portfolio companies.
Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of video game publisher Activision, its largest deal ever, closed in 2023. Young also played a role in Microsoft’s expansion of its partnership with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI and its ad deal with Netflix.
“As I spend the next several weeks supporting a smooth transition, I’m grateful for this chapter and am inspired by the possibilities the AI era presents for transformation and growth,” Young wrote in a LinkedIn post. “My entrepreneurial roots are calling me, and I’m excited about what’s ahead.” He did not provide details.
Young, one of the most prominent Black executives at Microsoft, “provided thought leadership on the importance of diversity and inclusion in the technology industry,” the company said in a 2023 filing.
While Microsoft hasn’t made any recent comments about its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, there has been a broader industry rollback since President Donald Trump’s reelection in November. Amazon said it’s halting some of its DEI programs, and Meta’s are being canceled.
In December, Microsoft’s chief diversity officer said the company’s work in the area was “more important than ever.”
Meta backs Databricks as the data analytics startup inches toward IPO
Data analytics software startup Databricks said Wednesday that Meta has signed on as an investor.
As the company that trains the popular Llama open-source large language models, or LLMs, that Databricks builds on, Meta plays an important role in the artificial intelligence. Databricks works closely with Meta’s Llama team, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, said in an interview this week.
The relationship goes all the way up to Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“We’ve discussed open-source software in the past, and he cares a lot about open-source models and Llama,” Ghodsi said.
Meta doesn’t invest in nearly as many startups as technology peers Alphabet and Microsoft. But Databricks has been a fast-growing company on a path to a major initial public offering. Meta invested in a $10 billion round for Databricks, one of the largest investments in the history of venture capital. Databricks has now raised $14 billion in venture funding.
The new money will go toward global expansion and liquidity for current and former employees.
On Wednesday, Databricks also announced a $5.25 billion credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase. Credit can be a much better option than spending with stock and diluting existing shareholders, even with a high interest rate, Ghodsi said.
The money in the bank did enable Databricks last year to train its own open-source LLM called DBRX, at a cost of about $10 million. DBRX performed better than Meta’s Llama and other alternatives in some tests at the time, but other models quickly surpassed it.
That’s one reason it was reasonable for Databricks to ally itself with the most prominent open model builder. Meta has plenty of money to spend on capital expenditures to train models, and Databricks can use its money in other ways, Ghodsi said.
He wouldn’t specify whether Meta is a client, nor would he say how much the operator of Facebook and Instagram invested.
San Francisco-based Databricks now employs 8,000 people. Ghodsi said it would not be “a huge surprise to me if we were public” a year from now.
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, participated in the $10 billion round alongside Meta. Ghodsi said Databricks is open to allowing its software to run on data centers from major operators in the Middle East. Today, it’s only available through the Amazon, Google and Microsoft clouds.
