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Microsoft’s OpenAI bid couldn’t have happened 10 years ago, senior engineer says

Charles Lamanna, who helps lead Microsoft Copilot, recalls that the company once believed it had all the answers within itself. Today, it embraces outside innovation.

Daniel Van Boom
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Charles Lamanna thinks Microsoft is a different company to the one he first joined, and he credits AI with driving that change. Microsoft.

The Microsoft of 2013 would have missed the opportunity to invest in OpenAI, according to one of the tech giant’s most senior engineers, because it was reluctant to seek improvement beyond its own walls.

Charles Lamanna, now a corporate vice president at Microsoft, is 11 years into his second stint with the company. It is a far different company to the one he first joined in 2009, he told Capital Brief.

“Back then, Redmond had all the answers,” Lamanna said, referring to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Seattle. “You looked inward to figure out the future.”

“We [now] don’t think Microsoft has all the answers. That is a cultural change that unlocked the OpenAI investment… that is a very different Microsoft.”