Kevin Scott

Kevin Scott grew up in Gladys, a small working-class town in rural Virginia, and spent time at the public library reading science fiction.⁠[1]

In 1994 he graduated from Lynchburg College (now the University of Lynchburg) with a bachelor of science in computer science, having been a Westover Honors College Fellow.⁠[2]

He earned a master’s degree in computer science at Wake Forest University and completed most of a PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia.⁠[3]

From 1998 to 2003 he worked closely with Professor Jack Davidson at the University of Virginia, interned at Microsoft’s research division in 2001, and turned an idea from one of their discussions into a tool called Strata. He said: “I had been coding since I was 11.”⁠[4]

A machine learning project he worked on at GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry in 2003 sparked his interest in artificial intelligence.⁠[1]

He later oversaw mobile ad engineering at Google, including the integration of the AdMob acquisition from 2009.⁠[2]

He joined LinkedIn in 2011; he has also been an angel investor in start-ups, including LiveLoop, which Microsoft acquired in 2015.⁠[5]

At LinkedIn he rose to senior vice president of engineering, helping lead the company through its IPO and six years of rapid growth.⁠[6]

On January 24, 2017, Microsoft named him to the newly created role of chief technology officer, joining its senior leadership team and reporting directly to CEO Satya NadellaSatya NadellaSatya Nadella is a business executive who serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft; his leadership career spans cloud computing, developer platforms, corporate acquisitions, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry while remaining LinkedIn’s senior vice president of infrastructure. Nadella said his first focus was to “bring together the world’s leading professional network and professional cloud.”⁠[7]

At homecoming in October 2017, the University of Lynchburg Alumni Association presented him with its Distinguished Alumni Award.⁠[6]

In 2019 he sent Nadella and Bill GatesBill GatesBill Gates is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who cofounded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and served as its chief executive and chairman. He later shifted his focus toward global health, education and climate, chairs the Gates Foundation, and manages investments through arrangements including Cascade.Open the full entry an email titled “Thoughts on OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry,” saying Google’s AI capabilities were “getting scarily good” and that Microsoft was years behind competitors in machine learning scale; Nadella replied that it was a “very good email” explaining why he wanted to do this. The emails were made public in 2024 in the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google.⁠[8]

On August 1, 2019, he appeared on the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast as Microsoft’s CTO in the episode “Kevin Scott: Microsoft CTO”; the description notes his earlier roles as LinkedIn’s senior vice president of engineering and operations and head of mobile ads engineering at Google.⁠[9]

In November 2019 Microsoft announced that he would take on additional duties as executive vice president of artificial intelligence and research in early 2020, succeeding Harry Shum.⁠[10]

His book Reprogramming the American Dream was released on April 7, 2020, arguing that technology such as AI can benefit people from all walks of life; he said his rural childhood shaped his perspective.⁠[11]

During the COVID-19 pandemic his team built a chatbot for the CDC and redirected Microsoft’s supercomputers to drug discovery; he noted that his mother has good internet while his aunt, three miles away, has very poor connectivity.⁠[12]

On July 16, 2024, ShopifyShopifyShopify is a commerce software company that originated in Ottawa, Canada, providing merchants with tools for online stores, physical retail, payments, orders and inventory management. The business began with Snowdevil, an online snowboard store founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke and others, and the standalone e-commerce platform launched in 2006. The company went public in 2015 and now trades under the ticker SHOP on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.Open the full entry announced it was welcoming him to its board.⁠[13]

Ahead of Microsoft Build in 2025, he said AI agents can reach their full potential only if they can “talk to everything in the world,” and that Microsoft was “very, very excited” about MCP; Microsoft introduced the open-source protocol NLWeb at the same time.⁠[14]

As of October 2026 he is Microsoft’s chief technology officer; he hosts the podcast Behind the Tech and founded the nonprofit of the same name, and serves on Shopify’s board, as a trustee of The Scott Foundation and on the leadership council of HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry’s Technology for Public Purpose program.⁠[3]

The Scott Foundation, a family foundation he co-founded, focuses on hunger, early childhood education and promoting women and girls in technology.⁠[2]

Microsoft: Official website: https://www.microsoft.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

LinkedIn: Official website: https://www.linkedin.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Shopify: Official website: https://www.shopify.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]

Google: Official website: https://www.google.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]