Former Microsoft executive Panos Panay will be taking over as the head of Amazon’s Devices and Services (D&S) division, the company confirmed. He'll start his new role at the end of October, CEO Andy Jassy said.

"As a strong product builder and inventor who has deep experience in both hardware and integrated services, Panos will be a great addition to our D&S organization moving forward," Jassy wrote in a memo. "I remain quite excited about the invention happening and businesses that we’re building in D&S, and look forward to working with Panos."

It emerged last week that Panay was leaving Microsoft after a 19-year run, most recently as the chief product officer, where he oversaw Surface devices and Windows 11 development. Rumors quickly suggested that Panay would move to Amazon to lead the Alexa and Echo teams.

Panay will be taking over from outgoing D&S head Dave Limp, and the pair will work together for a couple of months to make the transition a smooth one. Limp also has a new job. He is leaving Amazon to become the CEO of Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin. 

Reports of David Limp's retirement have been greatly exaggerated. The former SVP of Devices and Services announced last week at Amazon's 2023 Devices Event that he would be stepping down from the role he had held for more than a decade. By Monday, however, Limp had reportedly been tapped by Jeff Bezos to take over for current Blue Origin CEO, Bob Smith, who is retiring at the start of December.

MSNBC reports that Smith will stick around until January 2, 2024 to assist with the transition. Bezos sent the following announcement to the Blue Origin's workforce on Monday: 

I’m excited to share that Dave Limp will join Blue starting December 4th as CEO, replacing Bob, who has elected to step aside on January 2. The overlap is purposeful to ensure a smooth transition.

Before I provide some background on Dave, I’d like to take the time to recognize Bob and the significant growth and transformation we’ve experienced during his tenure. Under Bob’s leadership, Blue has grown to several billion dollars in sales orders, with a substantial backlog for our vehicles and engines. Our team has increased from 850 people when Bob joined to more than 10,000 today. We’ve expanded from one office in Kent to building a launch pad at LC-36 and five million square feet of facilities across seven states.

Our mission has grown too – we’ve flown 31 people above the Kármán Line, almost five percent of all the people who have been to space. Flight-qualified BE-4 engines are ready to boost Vulcan into orbit. New Glenn is nearing launch next year, and, with our recent NASA contract, we will land Americans back on the Moon, this time to stay. We have also engaged and inspired millions of children and educators through our Club for the Future efforts. We’ve made tremendous progress in building a road to space for the benefit of Earth, thanks to each of you and Bob’s leadership.

I’ve worked closely with Dave for many years. He is the right leader at the right time for Blue. Dave joins us after almost 14 years at Amazon, where he most recently served as senior vice president of Amazon Devices and Services, leading Kuiper, Kindle, Alexa, Zoox, and many other businesses. Before Amazon, Dave had roles at other high-tech companies, including Palm and Apple. Dave is a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset and extensive experience leading and scaling large, complex organizations. Dave has an outstanding sense of urgency, brings energy to everything, and helps teams move very fast.

Please join me in welcoming Dave and thanking Bob. Through this transition, I know we’ll remain focused on our customer commitments, production schedules, and executing with speed and operational excellence. I look forward to the many exciting and historic milestones ahead of us!

Jeff    

MSNBC obtained Limp's welcome as well:

Team Blue,

It’s been about six years since I joined Blue Origin. During that time, our team, facilities, and sales orders have grown dramatically, and we’ve made significant contributions to the history of spaceflight.

With pride and satisfaction in all that we’ve accomplished, I’m announcing that effective December 4, I will be stepping aside as Chief Executive Officer of Blue Origin. I will remain with Blue until January 2 to ensure a smooth transition with the new CEO.

It has been my privilege to be part of this great team, and I am confident that Blue Origin’s greatest achievements are still ahead of us. We’ve rapidly scaled this company from its prototyping and research roots to a large, prominent space business. We have the right strategy. a supremely talented team, a robust customer base, and some of the most technically ambitious and exciting projects in the entire industry. We also have a team that cares deeply about its mission, legacy, and how we contribute to the next generation and bring everyone into a brighter future.

Jeff and I have been discussing my plan for months, and Jeff will announce Blue’s new CEO in a separate note shortly. I’m very excited about the operational excellence and culture of innovation this new leader will bring to Blue. building on the foundation we’ve created over the past few years.

I’m committed to ensuring this transition is flawless, and everyone should know that Ill always be on Team Blue.

Gradatim Ferociter.

Bob Smith

Amazon has not officially named its successor for Limp, though Microsoft's product chief, Panos Panay — who also just so happened to leave the role he held for two decades last week — has been rumored as a leading choice for that position.

Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya is leaving PlatinumGames, after helping to found the company back in 2006 when it was called Seeds Inc. Kamiya was recently promoted to VP, so this move comes as a slight surprise. He recently said on social media that it was "by no means an easy decision to make."

Kamiya still has a couple of weeks on his post, as he officially exits the company on October 12. As for the why of it all, he wrote that the move “came after a lot of consideration based on my own beliefs," but didn't offer further explanation. He says he’s still going to make games in his “Hideki Kamiya way”, but hasn’t announced if he’s heading to another company, starting his own or even just planning to tinker away in a garage somewhere. He’s only 52, so a complete retirement is highly unlikely.

Kamiya’s mark on gaming is massive. Most recently, he was the supervising director of the critically-acclaimed Bayonetta 3. During his more than 15 years at PlatinumGames, Kamiya worked on classics like the original Bayonetta, the Wii U and Switch cult hit The Wonderful 101 and the action-heavy Astral Chain, among others. He was staffed at Capcom and its spin-off studio Clover before founding PlatinumGames, helming Resident Evil 2, Viewtiful Joe and Ōkami.

Kamiya has been hard at work these past few years on a superhero title internally referred to as Project GG. He was lead director on the “heroic” game and the company has marketed it as a conclusion to his superhero trilogy, joining Viewtiful Joe and the Wonderful 101. PlatinumGames hasn’t announced if the game’s still coming or if it will poof into vaporware with Kamiya’s departure.

Panos Panay is leaving Microsoft after 19 years with the company, as confirmed via an official tweet. He’s been operating as the chief product officer with Microsoft, heading up Windows 11 development and the company’s Surface line. Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s vice president of experience and devices, broke the news in an email to employees, as reported by The Verge.

Panay was hired on by Microsoft back in 2004 as a group program manager, overseeing a number of premium products. After heading the development of the initial Surface line of tablets and hybrid laptops, he was named the company’s chief product officer in 2018. His rise continued in 2021 when he was promoted to executive vice president after a successful Windows 11 launch, eventually becoming involved in a leadership team that directly advised CEO Satya Nadella.

There’s been no actual reason given by either party, but Panay says he has “decided to turn the page and write the next chapter.” The timing here is a bit suspicious, as Microsoft’s conducting a livestream event on Thursday that will almost certainly be dedicated to new Surface products. We reached out to the company for clarification as to why Panay left his position and what that means moving forward. We’ll update this post when we hear more.

As for what’s next, Microsoft has already said that Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s current corporate vice president of modern life, search and devices, will take Panay’s place as the head of the Windows and Surface divisions. The company also still seems committed to two areas of the business that Panay consistently championed: integrating AI into Windows 11 and mixed-reality. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement released to TechCrunch that the company remains “steadfast and convicted in our strategy.” We’ll have to see how this unfolds Thursday during Microsoft’s Surface-centric event.

The technology industry has been hit hard by layoffs this year, and GrubHub is the latest to cut staff. The company’s CEO Howard Migdal announced today that the company will be letting go of roughly 400 employees, or 15 percent of its corporate workforce. The layoffs will supposedly help Grubhub stay "competitive" with the market.

He said, "Over the last few months, I met with Grubhub teams to learn about the business from the ground up; I spoke to restaurants and diners to understand their needs – and challenges – when using our service." Impacted employees will be "notified over the next several hours." Migdal goes on to say that he understands that this will be a difficult time for all employees. For those who are keeping their jobs, he claims that more details about “our future together” will surface in the coming days.

Back in March of this year, Grubhub’s then CEO Adam DeWitt announced that he would be stepping down at the start of May amid increasing economic pressure. With Migdal as the new CEO, it’s not terribly surprising that his first move would be to try and reduce operating costs due to the continued economic pressure.

Grubhub isn’t the first and likely isn’t the last delivery service to start to cut employees. Late last year, DoorDash announced that it would be laying off nearly 1,300 employees due to "operating expenses." The company’s CEO Tony Xu said that DoorDash increased hiring during the pandemic and that operating expenses would continue to outgrow sales.

The big difference between DoorDash and Grubhub is that the former offered those who were laid off 13 weeks of compensation along with four weeks of severance pay. Grubhub’s announcement today did not mention any sort of compensation or severance pay for those who are being laid off.

Elon Musk is making good on his promise to step down as Twitter CEO following a poll. The entrepreneur has announced that a replacement chief executive will start in roughly six weeks. While he hasn't identified the new leader by name, it will be a woman. Musk will stay on as executive chairman and chief technical officer covering "product, software and sysops."

Developing...

One of streaming's most influential figures is stepping away from the spotlight. Netflix co-creator Reed Hastings is stepping down as the company's co-CEO. Ted Sarandos, who has been co-CEO since July 2020, will share the reins with newly promoted operations chief Greg Peters. Hastings will remain involved as Executive Chairman.

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Microsoft could announce wide-sweeping layoffs within the next few days. The possibility of the tech giant laying off a significant part of its workforce was first reported by Sky News and later corroborated by Bloomberg. Sky put the number of the cuts at approximately five percent of the company’s 220,000-person workforce or about 11,000 employees total. Bloomberg said it couldn’t find out the scale of the layoffs but reported they would affect “a number of engineering divisions” and that they’re set to be “significantly larger” than other rounds of job cuts undertaken by Microsoft over the last year.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Engadget the company does not comment on rumor and speculation. If the 11,000 figure is accurate, it would equal the 11,000 jobs Meta eliminated last year and fall short of the 18,000 positions Amazon expects to cut once the retailer is done with its far-reaching layoffs. In any case, Microsoft seemingly finds itself on a familiar trajectory. The company saw profits soar during the first two years of the pandemic, and it tried to capitalize on the moment by going on a hiring spree, adding 50,000 employees over that same time frame. But as recently as this past October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned of imminent belt-tightening due to worsening macroeconomic conditions. “We're focused on helping our customers do more with less, while investing in secular growth areas and managing our cost structure in a disciplined way," he told investors and analysts at the time. He’ll likely have more to say about Microsoft's current position when the company announces its second-quarter earnings on January 24th.

Warhammer shows and films may be coming to Prime Video in the next few years. Amazon has secured the global rights to Warhammer 40,000, according to Deadline, and Henry Cavill is set to star in and executive produce the franchise. The company's confirmation comes after the announcement by Games Workshop, the manufacturer behind the miniature wargame, that it has "reached an agreement in principle" with Amazon. It's unclear if the two companies have already worked out the details of their partnership, but Games Workshop said it's giving Amazon the rights to develop films and TV series based on the IP, along with any associated merchandising rights. Deadline lists games and animation as other potential projects.

The tabletop wargame has been around since 1987 and is set in the distant future with a rich lore that encompasses humans, alien races and gods. Based on Deadline's report, production company Vertigo Entertainment teamed up with Cavill, who once posted a photo of himself painting a Warhammer miniature in the middle of pandemic lockdowns, to secure the Warhammer 40,000 IP before bringing the project to Amazon. Cavill recently left The Witcher, where he played Geralt of Rivia, and was supposed to play Superman in future DC films. However, he was ultimately dropped as the superhero after DC Studios' new co-chairman James Gunn decided to write a movie for a younger Man of Steel. 

In a statement, Cavill said: "I have loved Warhammer since I was a boy, making this moment truly special for me. The opportunity to shepherd this cinematic universe from its inception is quite the honour and the responsibility. I couldn’t be more grateful for all the hard work put in by Vertigo, Amazon Studios and Games Workshop to make this happen. One step closer to making a nigh on lifelong dream come true."

Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter, he's officially taking the reins as CEO — for the moment, anyway. Twitter has made an amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that Musk is "the Chief Executive Officer" of the social network. This comes alongside the entrepreneur's moves to dissolve the company board, become sole director and fire many of the company's veteran executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal. He's clearing house, in other words.

It's not clear how long Musk will remain in the CEO position. He states that his sole director status is "just temporary," but hasn't elaborated. Musk already runs Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink, so there's only a limited amount of time to helm yet another firm. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has rolled over his shares (that is, transferred them to the new company), indicating his support for Musk.

Musk has already made or proposed sweeping changes in the first week of owning Twitter. On top of the leadership overhaul, he has reportedly ordered layoffs and unveiled plans for a "moderation council" that will make key content decisions. The new CEO has also floated a number of potential changes, including charging for verification as part of a Blue subscription and even resurrecting Vine.

The management shakeup is poised to be expensive, with The Guardianreporting that it could lead to a minimum $120 million in "golden parachute" exit payments. The figure pales in comparison to what Musk paid to buy Twitter in the first place, though.