Mary Jo Foley: What’s a consumer-focused outsider leading Microsoft’s AI push doing?

It’s no surprise that Microsoft is looking to transform the Copilot platform into a “Big App,” as its competitors are doing the same. But Microsoft is doing the job in a way that doesn’t follow its usual playbook, by placing a big bet on hiring a consumer who knows how to go outside in ways that ruffle feathers.

The company’s newly minted Copilot Vice President Jacob Andreou came to Microsoft from Greylock Partners and before that, Snapchat-maker Snap. Andreou currently oversees more than 11,000 Microsoft employees, according to a recent profile Good luck.

Microsoft is bringing in another former vice president of Snap (and Discord), Peter Sellis, to help, GeekWire you are educated. Sources say Sellis will be leading Copilot Design, Growth and Engineering, reporting to Andreou.

Andreou is part of the newly formed Copilot Leadership Team. His charter is to lead the “Copilot experience” by driving design, product, growth and engineering, as outlined in a March 2026 renewal memo from CEO Satya Nadella. He is one of a small team charged with shaping Copilot’s future, along with others focused on Copilot’s core platform and AI models.

Given Andreou’s Snap background, his plan to combine Microsoft’s consumer experience and Copilot business makes sense. It won’t be a snap, though. (See what I’m doing there?)

Although they both share the Copilot brand, consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot do not work the same way or use the same data sources or architecture. To begin with, Microsoft hasn’t had much luck with this kind of consumer-business integration, as evidenced by the low interest and adoption of its free, consumer-oriented product compared to the business-oriented Teams collaboration offering.

Andreou, 33, who is based in Los Angeles, seems comfortable with the challenge and is pushing other workers to put in 12-hour days to keep up with smaller, AI-focused companies. Good luck reports.

Microsoft was notorious for requiring employees to work long hours and weekends during the lean times leading up to Windows NT and Windows 95, but not so much in recent years. Microsoft is known as a place where outsiders often struggle to thrive compared to those who have been climbing the corporate ladder for years, making Andreou’s approach feel even more dangerous.

Andreou has been a big supporter of the Jobs production layer in consumer Copilot, which is public first. Jobs, which enables Copilot to manage workables, similar to the recently released Copilot Cowork layer that is part of Microsoft 365 Copilot. (I asked Microsoft if the two would merge into a single Cowork offering at some point but was told the company had no comment.)

However, the holy grail remains the “Super App.” With the Copilot Super App, Microsoft is looking to give consumers and business users a reason to stay inside Copilot regardless of the AI ​​functionality they’re interacting with — or their agents.

“Over the summer, we’re going to bring coding to all of the knowledge work within one Copilot Super App. That’s really exciting. So you’ll have Chat, Cowork, and Code all in Copilot,” Nadella told attendees of the Microsoft Build conference in early June.

Microsoft isn’t the only AI-focused company working on expanding its AI coding capabilities beyond just developers. And it’s not the only bet on the Super App concept.

• OpenAI is working to turn ChatGPT into a Super App that integrates ChatGPT and Codex into one place that acts as a personal assistant.
• Anthropic is expanding Claude to become a Big Application (although it didn’t use that term), again, by creating a single environment that integrates production, development and automation tools.

The Copilot Super App is not Andreou’s only focus. He tells Good luck that the choice of the AI ​​model and the beauty of the domestic AI model are also among his important priorities.

Microsoft is expanding the model selection in the Copilot Cowork feature beyond Anthropic to include OpenAI and soon, Microsoft’s Cowork 1 model – which may be based on Microsoft’s proprietary version of DeepSeek’s open model. The Cowork 1 will be the newest addition to Microsoft’s growing collection of Microsoft-developed models, seven of which debuted at Build this year. Microsoft wants to position itself as a champion of low-cost, efficient models designed for tokenized users.

Andreou his job is definitely set for him as a buyer in a company that focuses on business.

Microsoft 365 Copilot and consumer Copilot are just two of more than a dozen different “Copilot”-branded commercial offerings available across Microsoft’s various product groups, which can sound confusing.

Microsoft also needs to give users a clear way to find and use the rapidly growing stable of third-party agents, such as OpenClaw’s personal assistant Microsoft Scout. Will Andreou and his desire for a Super App bring at least some order to the Copilot and agent madness? We’ll know more sometime this summer.