Xbox VP of engineering Jared Palmer exits after 2 months to join AI startup Cognition

Xbox's new VP of engineering quits just 2 months after taking the job

Jared Palmer, who was picked to work directly with CEO Asha Sharma on the division's "most complex" problems, has taken a role at AI company Cognition. Just two months after he was appointed the new vice president of engineering at Xbox and technical advisor to CEO Asha Sharma, Jared Palmer is now the former vice president of engineering at Xbox and technical advisor to CEO Asha Sharma. In an update to his LinkedIn profile, Palmer said he's joined AI company Cognition to serve as its vice president of engineering instead. "I'm grateful to Asha and everyone at Microsoft and Xbox for an amazing year," Palmer wrote in a very to-the-point missive. "Excited for this next chapter." "Cognition operates Devin, the first autonomous software engineer," the company's website says, in case you were wondering what it actually does. "Devin plans, writes, tests, and ships production code on its own, working inside your codebase and the tools your team already uses." AI is definitely Palmer's thing: Prior to his brief tenure at Xbox, he was vice president of product at Microsoft's CoreAI division, which Sharma headed up before taking the reins at Xbox. That was a fairly short spin too, lasting just eight months; before that he spent roughly four years as the vice president of AI at AI infrastructure company Vercel. Sharma said when Palmer was appointed that he would work directly with her "on our most complex product and engineering problems, with a focus on developer tooling, taste, and infrastructure." That's a pretty big mandate, and I have to assume that at least some of those complex problems remain unsolved. You never want to read too much into these things, and the great likelihood is that Cognition is more up his alley than a struggling videogame platform, and also that it offered him tons of money. But even so, the optics of losing a guy who was hand-picked for such a vital role just two months into the job aren't great. Thus far, Sharma hasn't publicly acknowledged Palmer's departure. I've reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update if anyone gets back to me to wish him well, or otherwise.

Asha Sharma-appointed Xbox VP of engineering leaves a mere three months after being moved over from Microsoft's CoreAI team

When Microsoft assigned Asha Sharma as the new leader of the Xbox division in February, replacing the Phil Spencer regime, the executive brought along some of her former colleagues with her. Now, one of those recent hires is leaving. Jared Palmer, who previously held the title of Xbox VP of engineering, announced on X (via Kotaku) that he's joined Cognition, an AI company. "Personal update: I've joined Cognition to lead engineering," he wrote. "I'm grateful to Asha Sharma and everyone at Xbox for an amazing year." Palmer was among several of Sharma's former colleagues at Microsoft's CoreAI team, which the executive brought to the Xbox team in May. At the time, she said Palmer will work on developer tools, engineering, product and infrastructure. "He's spent his career building developer tools that remove friction and increase productivity," Sharma said of Palmer at the time. "That's exactly the mindset we want, using technology to support creators." Palmer's stint at Microsoft as a whole has been brief, having joined CoreAI in October last year, before moving to the Xbox team seven months later. It's not clear what prompted the VP to leave after such a short period at Xbox, but the reason could have more to do with where he's going rather than anything to do with Microsoft. Palmer leaves Xbox at the most tumultuous time in its history. As part of Asha Sharma's big reset plan, the executive laid off 1,600 people across almost all of the studios it owns, with further 1,600 to be laid off over the course of fiscal year 2027, for a total of 3,200. As part of the same campaign, Microsoft is divesting itself from four studios it previously owned, and is proposing the closure of another. It's not clear what effect this is going to have on the future of the platform, particularly when it comes to Xbox's next-gen console Project Helix, as the year or so preceding a new console launch is typically when most of that platform work is concentrated.

Xbox engineering VP leaves Microsoft to join Cognition AI lab

A key executive has left Microsoft years ahead of the next-gen Project Helix console, opting for a similar role at an AI company instead. Jared Palmer, the engineering VP that was directly appointed by new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, is now leaving Microsoft. "Personal update: I've joined Cognition to lead engineering. I'm grateful to Asha Sharma and everyone at Xbox for an amazing year," Palmer announced on Twitter and LinkedIn. Both Sharma and Palmer previously worked together in a similar arrangement at another Microsoft division, CoreAI, with Sharma serving as president and Palmer as VP. At Xbox, Palmer was involved with "removing friction and increasing productivity," and according to a memo from Sharma, Palmer was also working directly with her on Xbox's "most complex product and engineering problems." Microsoft is currently building out its toolset for its next-generation Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix. This device will be a complex system with AI directly embedded into it on a chip level, and likely requires new enhanced tools (like the DirectX optimizations) in order to fully utilize the power of the hardware. Disruptions in the process of AI-related or -adjacent engineering could affect the rate at which new games and tools are made for Helix. Meanwhile, AI is thoroughly dead at Xbox on a consumer-facing level. Yet Microsoft has yet to discuss further plans for its use of AI in games--could they be working with OpenAI on some sort of real-time AI chatbot that can generate in-game assets, similar to EA's experimental tech? Or what about Microsoft's MUSE AI generator, or its partnership with gen AI company InWorld?