CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday that search powered by artificial intelligence is the biggest thing to happen to his company in the nine years he’s been at the helm.
“I have not seen something like this since I would say 2007-2008, when the cloud was just first coming out,” Nadella told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview.
Microsoft invited reporters to its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, for an event that centered around new AI-powered updates to the company’s Bing search engine and Edge browser. Bing, which is a distant second to Googlein search, will now allow users to chat in a way that provides more detailed answers to queries.
The updates to Bing and Edge will launch Tuesday on desktop in a limited preview, meaning users will get a finite number of queries to search during the initial period.
Nadella said search is a very profitable business so these developments reflect a big opportunity for Microsoft.
“I’ve never ever felt this liberated in terms of opportunity in the days ahead,” he told CNBC.
B.C. Begley 