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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella keen on Korean partnerships with eye on AI

Published: 29 Mar. 2025, 07:00

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella poses for the camera during an exclusive interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily. [MICROSOFT KOREA]

For Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the future of AI is more than an answerer of random questions. It understands the stream of workflows to engage in constant interaction rather than simply providing a reply.

The U.S. tech guru envisions the development of AI agents — entities designed to perceive an environment and act on their own initiative to achieve goals.

"You are able to ask AI questions, assign tasks, and the AI always returns to us for permission and further instructions," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an exclusive interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, during his visit to Korea on March 26.

"It's not that autonomous agents are just working; the autonomous agents are working with us. That is what we are doing with Copilot."

Since becoming the CEO of Microsoft in 2014, Nadella has been at the forefront of the company's transformation for the better: Microsoft invested big in cloud systems and grew its Azure to lead the cloud computing landscape, deciding in 2023 to invest $13 billion into OpenAI to also be a leading player in the changing AI landscape.

The company integrated OpenAI's models into its Copilot AI assistant and its suite of Office 365 programs in recent years and is gearing up to offer more advanced features to its Copilot service.

The Microsoft CEO sat down with the JoongAng Ilbo on Tuesday at the Microsoft AI Tour event, held at the aT Center in southern Seoul.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Microsoft is building its own chips, such as Cobalt and Maia. How do you see Korean companies like Samsung Electronics, SK hynix or others working with you? I heard that some Korean companies are involved in packaging. Beyond that, do you see the potential for deeper collaboration, such as co-developing or manufacturing chips together?

A. Absolutely. Korea's semiconductor industry — in memory and in many other areas — is not only critical for Microsoft but also for the world when it comes to going forward [with the] innovation that is required.

Performance per dollar, per watt, or tokens per dollar, per watt — these factors are becoming the new equation that every country, community and company [is focusing on]. I think Korea has always been a leading provider of semiconductor technology, even in memory architectures that further accelerate performance, and that is where we would love to partner. We are already collaborating with all the companies you mentioned, and we are looking forward to it. We will continue working with Nvidia and AMD, developing our own chips, and partnering closely with the entire ecosystem.

Is there anything specific?

Right now, there are very specific projects that we are doing, whether with Samsung or SK hynix, and they are all core to our current set of projects. One thing I’m very impressed by, which you saw in our showcase, is what we’re doing with LG and KT. This is another great example of how we’re thinking about joint innovation. If you look at our partnership with KT, we’re focusing on extending our cloud infrastructure to make it more secure, ensuring that it is available to all of the regulated industries in Korea. This way, KT's trust can be parlayed on top of what we're doing, allowing Korean companies to use it.

That's one example of a deep partnership. The other partnership is [with] LG, which is building out their systems [with] robots powered by some of our AI capabilities […] I think it's pretty exciting to see how companies are partnering deeply with Microsoft to expand their global opportunities.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during the Microsoft AI Tour event in southern Seoul on March 26. [CHO YONG-JUN]

Is there anything you still need to improve in the green market?

I think this is diffusing so fast. As a technology, I think the key is to be able to make sure the adoption is happening fast, not just talking about technology but the broad use of it in your daily lives, whether as an employee at the workplace or as a consumer.

If you look at the last big wave of technology, let's say cloud and mobile, they were much more consumptive in nature. Most people used them to consume more, whereas with AI, it’s much more creative in nature. It’s about creation — whether it's a document, a video or an application. And I think that’s what needs to happen in every country.

Microsoft has one of the strongest AI systems in the world. But to become the final winner in AI, what is the biggest challenge you see, and is it a technical barrier and something really hard to solve with technology?

I think that, fundamentally, at this point, Microsoft wants to remain very focused on what is ultimately the challenge for all of us globally: How do we drive true economic growth in the developed world?

For example, can we double or triple the economic output in a way that all people in that country, in that economy, can benefit from? Unless and until we can parlay the strength and power of something like AI into better education outcomes, better health outcomes, better entrepreneurial energy, the success of multinationals, greater efficiency, and better public sector performance, technology for technology's sake will never amount to much.

There will always be technical challenges, and we have to overcome them, but to what end? Ultimately, to me, the goal is broad, widespread economic growth that benefits everybody, and that’s our goal.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the Microsoft AI Tour event in southern Seoul on March 26 [CHO YONG-JUN]

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, we saw new AI-powered phones, and people are now looking at AI-native devices. Do you see AI replacing smartphones or transforming them? Microsoft exited the smartphone market, but in the AI era, will you consider making devices again?

I think the key for Microsoft is to really keep innovating on this arc. What does AI do? AI introduces, as I mentioned in my keynote, completely new ways to mediate the computer interface with multimodal user experiences with memory, context, reasoning and planning. So you put all those things together and you start changing the experience. You start by changing how I use the browser and how I use the applications today, or how I use my devices.

When you look at Copilot, there are all these new capabilities. For example, I can generate, fill or perform super-resolution with just a click. These are things I couldn’t do in the past, but now they’re just part of the system. If you start doing all of that natively, then it’s true that there may also be changes in both form and function, not just function alone.

So, I think we should be open-minded about what new devices may make sense. PCs are still being used along with your phones, and I think phones and PCs and new devices will be used in the future. Thinking of the full arc over time — where your AI experiences are helping you with your computer interfaces — I think it is the way we will go.

BY KWON YU-JIN [[email protected]]