
Bill Neukom, 1942-2025: Microsoft's top lawyer led company through key milestones and battles
William H. 'Bill' Neukom, Microsoft's top lawyer during its pivotal corporate milestones and legal cases of the 1980s and 1990s, has died at the age of 83.
Known for his trademark bow tie in a sea of Oxford shirts and khakis, Neukom was defined by a strong sense of fair play, justice, and the rule of law, colleagues said.
'Bill established at Microsoft — and among our lawyers — a deep cultural commitment to excellence, public service, and high integrity,' said Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and vice chair, who succeeded Neukom as general counsel, in a statement released by the company Thursday evening.
After starting as Microsoft's first outside lawyer in 1978, Neukom joined the company as its in-house legal counsel in 1985. As executive vice president of law and corporate affairs, he built the Microsoft legal department from a handful of employees to nearly 600 people by the time he retired from the company in 2002.
An independent legal voice
Working with Bill Gates and other executives of that era, Neukom and his team adopted an approach of 'professional independence' from their Microsoft colleagues, as he recalled in an interview with the Microsoft Alumni Network as part of a series of oral histories for the company's 50th anniversary.
'We played softball with them, we ate at the cafeteria with them. We were in many cases best friends with them,' Neukom said. 'But we had to tell them what they needed to know — not what they wanted to hear from us.'
At the time, he said, 'Many of these young, brilliant people here at Microsoft had no concept of what the legal environment was and how business complies with the law.' The key, he added, was to provide wise counsel without blocking innovation.
IPO and antitrust challenges
Neukom guided Microsoft through its initial public offering in 1985 and led its response to major legal challenges, including antitrust complaints from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.
He remained firm in his belief that Microsoft had done nothing wrong. He asserted that the company's actions were fair, legal, and good for consumers, and he strongly opposed the government's push to break up Microsoft.
Even as pressure mounted, Gates, Neukom and Microsoft refused to settle on terms they believed would hurt the company's ability to innovate — a stance that some saw as principled, and others saw as stubborn.
Microsoft ultimately reached a consent decree with the DOJ, keeping the company intact. But the antitrust era can be seen in hindsight as a distraction, at best, that kept the company's leaders from fully capitalizing on the rise of the internet and mobile technologies during a period of massive industry change.
Technology law pioneer
In the broader world of technology law, Neukom played a key role in establishing intellectual property rights for software, and shaped the industry's approach to software licensing.
After leaving Microsoft, he chaired his former law firm (now known as K&L Gates) from 2003 to 2007, was president of the American Bar Association from 2007 to 2008, and founded the World Justice Project, an organization dedicated to promoting the rule of law globally.
Beyond the tech and legal industries, Neukom served as CEO of the San Francisco Giants baseball team from 2008 to 2011, including their World Series victory in 2010.
The values established by Neukom at Microsoft 'continue to define our work more than two decades after his retirement,' Smith said. 'We will miss him, especially as we reflect on how we benefited from his leadership.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Business Insider
25 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Surge AI's CEO says he would never hire these 2 roles at an early-stage startup
Product managers and data scientists have no place on a founding team, said Surge AI's CEO, Edwin Chen. Chen said on an episode of "No Priors Podcast" published Thursday that he often hears early-stage founders list the roles among their first five to 10 hires. "This is just wild to me," he said. Chen, who used to be a data scientist himself, said he would not hire data scientists early. "Data scientists are great when you want to optimize your product by 2% or 5%, but that's definitely not what you want to be doing when you start a company," he said. "You're trying to swing for 10x or 100x changes, not worrying and nitpicking about small percentage points that are just noise anyway." The founder of the data labeling startup also said product managers don't make sense early on. He said that the role becomes useful only once engineers no longer have the time or capacity to drive product direction. "Your engineer should be hands-on. They should be having great ideas as well," he said. " Product managers are great when your company gets big enough, but at the beginning, you should be thinking about yourself, about what product you want to build," he added. Surge AI and Chen did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The great product manager debate Chen's comments come as the debate continues in the startup world over the role of product managers. Product managers have been referred to — both affectionately and critically — as "mini-CEOs" of the products they oversee. They act as a bridge among engineers, sales teams, customer service, and other departments, ensuring that products align with user needs. But the role has become a polarizing one, with some tech workers arguing that product managers add little value, Business Insider's Amanda Hoover reported in November. Microsoft wants to increase the number of engineers relative to product or program managers, BI's Ashley Stewart reported in March. Other companies like Airbnb and Snap are rethinking the need for product managers. The call for executives to go " founder mode" — a concept coined by the Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham and touted by Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky — has some leaders questioning whether they should delegate product decisions to product managers. In 2023, Chesky merged product management with marketing, and Snap told The Information in the same year that it laid off 20 product managers to help speed up the company's decision-making. Others believe product managers' influence will only grow in the age of AI. Microsoft's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, said on an episode of the "Twenty Minute VC" podcast published in March that product managers play a crucial role in setting up "feedback loops" to make AI agents better.


CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
CCTV Script 24/07/25
The Trump administration's newly released "AI Action Plan" marks a clear policy shift compared to the previous Biden administration. The Trump government advocates for loosening regulations, accelerating the construction of data centers, and supporting the export of AI technologies. Analysts point out that tech companies like OpenAI and Microsoft are clear beneficiaries of this plan. According to the latest guidelines, federal agencies are instructed to remove any regulatory barriers hindering AI development. Additionally, when allocating federal funding, they will consider whether state-level regulations are unfavorable to AI. The U.S. tech industry has been working to build closer ties with the Trump administration. Over the past few months, several companies have announced investments exceeding $1.5 trillion in data centers and manufacturing sectors. According to the U.S. nonprofit organization Issue One, eight American tech companies, including OpenAI, Meta, and NVIDIA, spent a total of $36 million on federal lobbying in the first half of this year. Critics have raised concerns about this lobbying influence. For instance, the executive director of the U.S. nonprofit "Tech Oversight Project" argued that the White House's AI plan seems like it simply rubber-stamped recommendations from big tech CEOs, turning them into official government documents. However, it's important to note that implementing these plans faces significant real-world challenges. Brooke, Vice President of the Atlantic Council, highlighted execution challenges. He questioned whether, given the widespread budget cuts and staff shortages in the federal government, there are sufficient expertise and financial resources to fulfill the commitments and goals outlined in the AI Action Plan. Additionally, experts have pointed out difficulties in energy planning. A former White House Chief Information Officer told CNBC that the government faces tough choices: on one hand, it must ensure stable power supply for data centers handling critical government or corporate tasks; on the other hand, these data centers are often located near residential areas and schools, which complicates planning. "...now you're thinking about, well, who gets powered today? Is it a residential neighborhood? Is it the schools, or is it this data center?... it's really a balancing act on a tightrope." Finally, legal experts have raised concerns about the "AI Action Plan," focusing on two key issues: the unresolved copyright disputes and the vague definition of "ideological bias." Currently, U.S. media and entertainment companies have filed dozens of lawsuits regarding whether tech companies can use copyrighted content to train AI models. The Trump administration has yet to make a clear statement on this issue. What Trump has explicitly stated, however, is his demand for AI models to maintain ideological neutrality. However, Professor Little from the University of California, San Francisco, pointed out that the U.S. government's definition of ideology remains unclear.


NBC News
3 hours ago
- NBC News
Microsoft's Satya Nadella says job cuts have been 'weighing heavily' on him
Microsoft has laid off over 15,000 people so far in 2025. The stress of the belt-tightening has gotten to CEO Satya Nadella. 'Before anything else, I want to speak to what's been weighing heavily on me, and what I know many of you are thinking about: the recent job eliminations,' Nadella wrote in a memo to employees Thursday. After Microsoft's latest labor reductions, investors pushed the stock's closing price above $500 for the first time on July 9. The company announced the layoffs of about 9,000 people a week earlier. Microsoft employed 228,000 people as of June 2024. It hasn't provided a new figure that takes into account its layoffs this year, but Nadella wrote that headcount is basically flat. 'This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value,' he wrote. 'Progress isn't linear. It's dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding. But it's also a new opportunity for us to shape, lead through, and have greater impact than ever before.' The cuts at Microsoft are reflective of an overall trend across the tech industry, with over 80,000 positions eliminated to date in 2025, according to one count. Recruit Holdings announced earlier this month that it would lay off 1,300 people from its human resources technology segment that includes the Indeed and Glassdoor websites. The company's CEO pointed to artificial intelligence in a memo, Bloomberg reported. On social media in recent months, some Microsoft employees have become disheartened about the company's cutbacks, given its stature. 'I have loved working for this company, still do, but this has done so much damage to that loyalty because it has shown that Microsoft's espoused values do not apply to business decisions at the macro level,' a person who lists themselves as a Microsoft directed on LinkedIn posted last week. Microsoft is the world's most valuable public company after Nvidia, whose chips have become a critical piece of the AI arms race. Microsoft's Windows and Office franchises remain dominant, and its Azure cloud services have seen faster growth in recent years as OpenAI and other companies rent out Nvidia graphics cards to run AI models. In the memo, Nadella touched on Microsoft's mission for the past 10 years, which has been to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and how the rise of AI is changing it. 'We must reimagine our mission for a new era,' he wrote. 'What does empowerment look like in the era of AI? It's not just about building tools for specific roles or tasks. It's about building tools that empower everyone to create their own tools. That's the shift we are driving — from a software factory to an intelligence engine empowering every person and organization to build whatever they need to achieve.'