Microsoft head of communications Frank Shaw leaving after nearly 30 years of shaping software giant’s public messaging

Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s chief communications officer, is on his way out after nearly three decades helping steer how the company speaks to the outside world. He told staff in a memo, seen by Fortune, that he’s ready to try something new, though he hasn’t decided what comes next. He’ll stay through the end of the year.

Shaw said the move had been under discussion with Microsoft marketing chief Takeshi Numoto for some time, and that both felt now was the right moment. In the memo, he wrote that he remains optimistic about the company’s mission and its talent, and called the next stretch a critical time for Microsoft. That’s corporate goodbye language, sure, but it also reads like someone who knows the ship is still moving fast.

He has been in the communications role for 17 years and is one of Silicon Valley’s best-known PR figures. Before that, he spent 12 years as president at We. Communications, working closely with Microsoft’s PR machine. Over the years he worked with all three of the company’s chief executives: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella. He also served in the U.S. Marine Corps and graduated from the University of Oregon with a journalism degree.

Shaw came to Microsoft in 1997, when the company still lived and died by boxed PC software like Windows 95 and Office 97. A lot has changed since then. Microsoft is now pushing hard on Copilot, pouring money into cloud computing to keep up with AI demand, and constantly reworking teams around those goals. Shaw’s own recent work has been tied to that shift: explaining AI partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, and defending Xbox when the business has looked less shiny.

His departure fits the wider churn inside Microsoft. In March, Nadella created a unified Copilot team led by Jacob Andreou. Rajesh Jha announced his retirement that same month, Phil Spencer retired earlier this year, and in 2025 Microsoft laid off more than 15,000 employees across sales, Xbox and other departments. The company also offered buyouts in April to long-tenured workers. Meanwhile, Azure crossed $100 billion in annual revenue in its most recent quarter, with much of the growth tied to AI and a large share of the business coming from OpenAI.