Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is shaking up the leadership roster of Microsoft’s gaming brand by bringing in and elevating some old team members from her days heading up Microsoft’s CoreAI engineering platform. Sharma has already been making big waves at Xbox in the short time since she became CEO, and adding select CoreAI members to top roles at the gaming brand is intended to expand its range of technical expertise.
Sharma was appointed as the CEO of Xbox on February 23, mere days after the start of a leadership shuffle that began with the retirement announcement of Phil Spencer, who had been the brand’s most recognizable leader for more than a decade prior. Before becoming CEO, Sharma had served as president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product from 2024 to early 2026, and had held high-ranking technical roles at both Meta and Instacart prior to taking that position.
Xbox Adds Four Former CoreAI Members to High Profile Roles
Less than three months after assuming her new office, Sharma is now reportedly bringing in five former colleagues, four of whom she worked with on CoreAI, to help right the course for Xbox. This information comes from CNBC, which reportedly viewed a memo detailing the new team members, what their roles will be within the Xbox brand, and the reason for taking them on board. The memo reportedly states that these five individuals will be “new leaders with consumer and technical expertise we do not yet have,” showing that her plans extend far beyond lowering prices for Game Pass.
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The reshuffling of top-ranked staff appears to be an attempt to expand Xbox’s outreach to the public and to “ship impact quickly,” as opposed to focusing too heavily on internal issues, which may be a key business factor while the company is in development of its next-gen Project Helix console. Part of Sharma’s explanation for the internal shake-up has been laid out publicly in a post on her official Twitter account, stating that the Xbox brand will “retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed.” One specific example is the guidance feature Copilot, with plans in the works to start “winding down” its use on mobile devices and to end its development for consoles.
Among the new faces at Xbox are head of growth Jonathan McKay, who previously served in the same title at CoreAI and with AI chatbot ChatGPT at OpenAI. Other former Microsoft CoreAI members reportedly joining Xbox are new design lead Tim Allen, who has served as CoreAI’s vice president of design; CoreAI general manager Evan Chaki, who will lead an engineering team dedicated to simplifying workloads; and CoreAI vice president of product Jared Palmer, who will be taking a technical role working in engineering, infrastructure, and development tools. Another new hire mentioned in the memo is new subscription and cloud business leader David Schloss, who comes in from a role as senior director of product and growth at Instacart.
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The memo also mentions the departures of a pair of 24-year Microsoft employees, with corporate vice presidents Kevin Gammill and Roanne Sones both leaving their posts, though Sones’ departure will not be effective until after summer, and she is planned to return as an advisor for the Xbox brand. Along with the departure of Spencer from Xbox earlier in the year, former president of Xbox Sarah Bond also stepped down early in 2026, though she, too, has been serving as a special advisor to Sharma during the transitional period.
