Microsoft CEO Nadella: Using Excel Agents to Question Formulas and Simulate Scenarios for ROIC Assessment
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella disclosed in a podcast how he uses AI agents in his daily work. Instead of merely accepting model outputs, he "operates, questions, and continues reasoning" around them, using Excel agents to analyze data center formulas and generate multi-scenario worksheets. He also combines Microsoft Fabric to track SEC filings and company ROIC in real time. This account illustrates how enterprise leadership integrates AI into core financial and operational decision-making.
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In the latest episode of the Sources Podcast, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella detailed how he uses Cowork and Excel agents in his daily work. Unlike his previous emphasis on macro visions, this time he focused on specific micro-operations: he does not just accept the results given by the model, but "operates it, questions it, and keeps reasoning around the results."
Nadella gave an example: when the data center team sends a complex spreadsheet, he opens it, locates a cell, asks the Excel agent to examine the formula used in that cell, and requests it to generate five worksheets covering different scenarios. He calls this ability to complete analysis through reasoning "causal inference," identifying it as one of the important advances in Microsoft's existing AI systems.
Beyond internal table analysis, Nadella mentioned a second advance: combining the corporate environment with the global environment. He deployed a "data runner" in Microsoft Fabric that automatically retrieves cloud service provider data published by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), imports it into semantic models, and has programming agents organize the results into dashboards. This allows him to view return on invested capital (ROIC) at various levels in real time, continuously aggregating external public filings with his own internal analyses.