Xbox VP of engineering Jared Palmer is leaving to join applied AI lab Cognition. You might be wondering “Who is that?” Good question. Palmer joined Xbox to help advise Asha Sharma directly on improving the platform’s developer tools and infrastructure. He was named as part of her leadership team during a management shakeup back in May. So why is he leaving only three months later?
“Personal update: I’ve joined Cognition to lead engineering,” he announced on X today. “I’m grateful to Asha Sharma and everyone at Xbox for an amazing year. Excited for this next chapter with Scott Wu [Cognition cofounder and CEO] and team.” Palmer, who only joined Microsoft’s CoreAI team last October, didn’t elaborate further on the reasons for change.
Palmer was one of several people named in a memo to staff from Sharma back in May that laid out a series of personnel changes and promotions. She praised him as a “product leader who understands modern development, including where tools can remove friction and help teams move faster.”
She continued, “He’s spent his career building developer tools that remove friction and increase productivity. That’s exactly the mindset we want, using technology to support creators.” While a member of the engineering team, Palmer would report directly to Sharma, “working directly with me on our most complex product and engineering problems, with a focus on developer tooling, taste, and infrastructure.”
Maybe those problems have already been fixed. More likely, he received an offer he couldn’t refuse from Cognition. The startup, which received $21 million in backing from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund in 2024, is already valued at over $4 billion. It makes an AI coding tool called Devin. Apparently a lot more exciting than whatever Xbox’s engineers are working on right now.
Palmer previously likened the shift from human programming to agentic software development to being like people learning how to play Guitar Hero instead of guitar. Palmer and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.