Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that he likes listening to podcasts, but not in the way that you would expect.
The Indian-origin tech industry leader has revealed how he uses Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant to help break down podcasts. First, Nadella uploads the transcript of a podcast episode into the Copilot app on his iPhone. Then, he chats with the voice assistant about the contents of the podcast episode in the car while on the way to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“I’m an email typist,” Nadella was quoted as jokingly saying by the business news outlet. He was referring to the various ways in which he uses Copilot for daily tasks such as summarizing messages he receives in Outlook and Teams. Nadella said that he also relies on at least 10 custom agents from Copilot Studio that he views as AI chiefs of staff, as per the report.
Nadella further spoke about how Microsoft chose to embrace DeepSeek R1, when it was released, instead of trying to stamp it out as a potential rival. “Get it out,” Nadella reportedly told Microsoft staffers, instructing them to integrate R1 on Microsoft’s cloud so that it could be accessed by customers, alongside products from OpenAI and Microsoft as well.
he Bloomberg report comes days ahead of Microsoft Build 2025, the annual developer conference where Nadella is set to unveil the latest AI-focused features and services that the company has been working on for the past few months.
Speaking at Meta’s first-ever AI developer event called LlamaCon held last month, the Microsoft CEO had revealed that around 20-30 per cent of the company’s code is now AI-generated. Weeks later, Microsoft announced it was laying off around 6,000 employees in what is said to be the company’s largest round of job cuts since 2023.
