Zaid Kahn

Zaid Kahn is Vice President of Microsoft’s Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering organization. He leads systems engineering and hardware development for Azure, including AI systems, compute, memory, and infrastructure. Kahn’s teams are responsible for software and hardware engineering efforts as well as specialized compute systems, FPGA network products, and ASIC hardware accelerators. Kahn is part of the technical leadership team across Microsoft that sets AI hardware strategy for training and inference. His team is also responsible for the development of Microsoft’s systems for MAIA and Cobalt custom silicon.



Prior to joining Microsoft, Kahn was the head of infrastructure at LinkedIn. He was responsible for all aspects of architecture and engineering for data centers, networking, computer, storage, and hardware. Kahn also led several software development teams focusing on building and managing infrastructure as code. The network teams Kahn led built the global network for LinkedIn, including POPs, peering for edge services, IPv6 implementation, DWDM infrastructure, and data center network fabric.



Kahn holds several patents in networking and is a sought-after keynote speaker at top-tier conferences and events. He is also currently Chair of Open Compute Foundation (OCP), EECS External Advisory Board (EAB) at UC Berkeley, and a board member of Internet Ecosystem Innovation Committee (IEIC), a global Internet think tank promoting Internet diversity. Kahn has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Physics from the University of the South Pacific.