Thomas Dohmke, chief executive of Microsoft Corp.’s GitHub unit, today announced plans to step down.

Axios reported that the tech giant doesn’t plan to appoint a new CEO for the business. Instead, it will relegate key leadership responsibilities to members of its recently formed CoreAI – Platform and Tools group. The unit maintains many of Microsoft’s developer tools.

GitHub became part of the company through a $7.5 billion acquisition that closed in 2018. Dohmke joined Microsoft four years earlier when it bought his startup, a developer tooling provider called HockeyApp. The executive became GitHub’s CEO in 2021. 

“Still, after all this time, my startup roots have begun tugging on me and I’ve decided to leave GitHub to become a founder again,” Dohmke wrote in a blog post. “GitHub and its leadership team will continue its mission as part of Microsoft’s CoreAI organization, with more details shared soon.”

CoreAI launched earlier this year under the leadership of former Meta Platforms Inc. executive Jay Parikh. It develops technology for GitHub Copilot, the artificial intelligence coding assistant that GitHub offers to its users. The group also helps maintain the software development kits that programmers use to write applications for Microsoft products.

The unit already collaborates with GitHub in some areas. Dohmke reports to Julia Liuson, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer division, who in turn reports to Parikh. Additionally, CoreAI develops technology for GitHub Copilot, the AI assistant that GitHub offers to users of its platform.

Dohmke will remain at GitHub until the end of the year. According to Axios, Liuson will become responsible for GitHub’s revenue, engineering and support teams. GitHub chief product offer Mario Rodriguez will report to Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s head of AI platform product.

The CEO disclosed today that GitHub Copilot has topped 20 million users. The service helps developers understand code written by colleagues, generate new code from scratch and perform related tasks. Under the hood, it’s powered by large language models from several providers including Microsoft rival Google LLC.

GitHub has also integrated AI into other parts of its platform. Its Advanced Security product suite, for example, uses LLMs to suggest ways of fixing code vulnerabilities. It can also scan applications for encryption keys and other pieces of data that may be stored insecurely.

GitHub competes with Nasdaq-listed GitLab Inc., which offers a popular code hosting platform of the same name. Similarly to the Microsoft unit, GitLab has extended its platform’s feature set to numerous adjacent use cases over the years. It offers an AI coding assistant called Duo that can perform many of the same tasks as GitHub Copilot.

Image: GitHub