January 6, 2025 – Rehan Sheikh, a top silicon engineering executive from Microsoft who played a key role in launching the new Azure Cobalt processor and Azure Maia AI accelerator, has switched sides to join competitor Google Cloud. He will spearhead Google Cloud’s silicon chip technology innovation.
With a wealth of experience in the IT industry, Sheikh brings his expertise in silicon chip technology to Google Cloud after spending a significant part of his career at Intel, where he spent 24 years leading silicon engineering and productization. Most recently, he served as the Vice President of Silicon Manufacturing and Engineering at Microsoft before being appointed as the Vice President of Global Silicon Chip Technology and Manufacturing at Google Cloud.
“I am thrilled to embark on this journey and contribute to the growth of Google Cloud,” Sheikh stated in a recent LinkedIn post. “I look forward to collaborating with the many talented engineers and leaders at Google, as well as experts from the industry ecosystem.”
Google has invested millions of dollars in developing AI-specific chips for its cloud customers, such as its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and Arm-based Axion CPUs. The company’s sixth and most powerful TPU, Trillium, was officially launched in December 2024.
Prior to joining Microsoft in 2021, Sheikh spent the majority of his IT career at Intel from 1997 to 2021, where he led chip engineering and productization efforts in areas including 5G data centers, discrete graphics, and Atom-based system-on-a-chip processors. At Microsoft, he rose to become the Vice President of Silicon Manufacturing and Packaging Engineering in 2023, overseeing chip development across multiple areas of the company.
