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One of the VPs working directly under Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has left the company, just two months after getting the job.
As spotted by PC Gamer, Jared Palmer has left his position as vice president of engineering at Xbox, a job that will be integral to Sharma’s ongoing “reset” at Xbox. It’s unclear who will be taking his place. He is now at Cognition - a company that specialises in AI.
AI Engineer Pivots Back To AI After Just Two Months At Xbox
“Personal update: I’ve joined Cognition to lead engineering,” Palmer writes on social media. “I’m grateful to Asha and everyone at Microsoft and Xbox for an amazing year. Excited for this next chapter.”
For reference, he only announced his new job at Xbox back in May. “Excited to share that I’m joining Xbox as VP, Engineering & Technical Advisor to CEO [Asha Sharma],” he wrote at the time. “I’ll be focused on building world-class tools, services, and experiences for developers and players across the Xbox ecosystem. Grateful for the opportunity and excited to get to work.”
His appointment worried some in the gaming community, since Palmer’s most recent gig was with CoreAI within Microsoft. While he is no longer at Xbox, some of his fellow CoreAI alumni are, so their influence is still strong within Sharma’s circle.
With that said, Sharma has previously pledged that Xbox won’t go all in on “AI slop”.
It’s honestly quite surprising that Palmer’s contract didn’t forbid him from doing exactly this. Perhaps Cognition wasn’t seen as a competitor to Xbox, and therefore, not covered by any potential clauses preventing him from running off elsewhere. Indeed, I think there would be words if he’d jumped ship to PlayStation instead.
Given the wording of his announcement that he’s joining Cognition, it seems very unlikely that he was caught up in the recent layoffs. He joined Sharma’s team as she was making a big leadership shakeup at Xbox, so it seemed that she intended for him to be there long-term.
Right now, there’s no word on who will be replacing Palmer, but Xbox will certainly need those “world-class tools, services, and experiences” to get projects off the ground with 1,600 fewer employees after the layoffs.
