GitHub CEO stepping down draws attention: Microsoft's AI strategy faces challenges, competition in the intelligent programming sector intensifies

According to Zhitong Finance APP, GitHub, the code hosting platform under Microsoft (MSFT.US), is facing fierce competition in the field of artificial intelligence coding tools. Its CEO, Thomas Dohmke, has announced his impending departure, with no clear successor yet. Dohmke has served as GitHub's CEO since 2021, and his career trajectory is closely tied to Microsoft's acquisition. He joined the company in 2015 through Microsoft's acquisition of HockeyApp, which he founded. After Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018, he transitioned to product lead in mid-2021 and later succeeded Nat Friedman as CEO later that year. In an internal blog post released on Monday, Dohmke stated that his departure is to "return to a founder role," but he will remain until the end of the year to assist with the transition. Currently, GitHub has been integrated into the CoreAI platform and tools department established by Microsoft in January this year, which is led by former Meta executive Jay Parikh. According to internal sources, three GitHub executives: Vladimir Fedorov, Kyle Daigle, and Elizabeth Pemmerl, will report directly to Julia Liuson, an executive at Microsoft's CoreAI. As an AI programming tool launched in collaboration with OpenAI, Copilot has become an important product for enhancing developer efficiency since its launch during Friedman’s tenure in 2021. GitHub currently claims over 150 million registered developers, doubling from 73 million in October 2021. Despite leveraging the first-mover advantage of a code-sharing platform, GitHub is facing challenges in the "vibecoding" field from emerging tools like Cursor (developed by Anysphere), Replit, and Windsurf, with the latter's CEO recently poached by Google (GOOGL.US) in a $2.4 billion AI talent deal. A developer survey conducted by Stack Overflow in May-June this year showed that 76% of respondents use Microsoft Visual Studio Code as their primary editor, with Cursor in second place at 18%, followed by Anthropic's Claude Code (10%) and Windsurf (5%). These three tools were not included in last year's survey. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed last month that Copilot's user base has reached 20 million, with a 75% quarter-over-quarter increase in enterprise customers, indicating that the product continues to maintain growth momentum. In his departure statement, Dohmke emphasized that GitHub will continue to advance its mission as a core part of the CoreAI organization and looked forward to the future: "I firmly believe the world will enter an era of a billion developers, empowered by billions of AI agents, each transforming human intelligence into new software gold mines." When that day comes, GitHub will be the starting point of this path of innovation. The current situation of GitHub reveals the inevitable path of technology platforms under the AI wave. Microsoft strengthens the Copilot ecosystem by integrating resources to respond to market competition. However, companies need to establish a new efficiency evaluation system to avoid the degradation of technical capabilities. Whether GitHub can continue the open-source spirit within the Microsoft system will become a key measure for observing the health of the development ecosystem in the AI era