A Rare Joint Interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Bill Gates

In February 2014, Satya Nadella became the third CEO of Microsoft . Nadella, more soft-spoken than his predecessors, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, assumed the company's helm amid one of its stormiest chapters. Ballmer, toward the end of his 14-year tenure, had purchased Nokia's mobile phone business at great cost ($7.2 billion) but failed to make a dent in the market dominance of Apple and Samsung . Nadella quickly nixed those ambitions and instead ramped up investment in artificial intelligence and commercial cloud computing. The result has been a remarkable turnaround, featuring major growth in cloud services revenue, a doubling of year-on-year profits and an all-time stock price high. In his new book, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone (released September 26), Nadella, 50, explains this corporate transformation, lays out his hopeful vision for technological progress and recounts his own rich personal history.