Microsoft has launched one of the most ambitious code transformation programs ever announced in the software industry: the stated goal is to completely remove C and C++ from its core repositories by 2030, replacing them with Rust. The initiative involves core assets like Windows and Azure and concerns one of the largest commercial code bases in the world.
The announcement wasn’t based on rumors, but rather on a public internal position within the company. Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt made it explicit in a job posting on LinkedIn. In the post, Hunt described an industry strategy aimed at systematically rewriting the company’s core software, combining algorithmic automation and artificial intelligence.
Galen Hunt is a leading figure in Microsoft systems development. He has worked in the operating systems and low-level software field for years and currently focuses his work on integrating large language models into system software development.
During his career at Microsoft, he founded and led the Azure Sphere team, the end-to-end security platform for IoT and embedded devices, designed to enable manufacturers to build hardware with high security standards. Previously, he held key roles within Microsoft Research, contributing to the development of operating system and distributed system technologies.
Among the best-known projects he led is Drawbridge , an initiative aimed at redefining the boundary between kernel and hypervisor . Between 2012 and 2013, Hunt worked on implementing the technology on Azure in real-world production settings; the same architecture was later used to port Microsoft SQL Service to Linux.
In his LinkedIn post, Hunt summarizes his vision as follows: the complete elimination of every line of C and C++ code from Microsoft repositories by the end of the decade.
For a company with decades of history and hundreds of millions of lines of code, heavily intertwined with C and C++ in areas such as operating systems, databases, compilers, virtualization, and cloud, this isn’t just a simple technological upgrade. It’s an operation that involves the organization, skills, methodologies, and the entire development toolchain.
Specifically, Hunt explains that the team is building an infrastructure capable of analyzing large volumes of source code using algorithmic models and artificial intelligence agents, with the goal of automatically rewriting entire software components. The stated ambition is to achieve a productivity of one million lines of code converted by a single engineer within a month.
The working group operates within Microsoft’s CoreAI division, within the Engineering Horizons department, under the program called “Future of Scalable Software Engineering.” It’s not a team tied to a single product, but rather a structure designed to develop reusable capabilities at enterprise scale and, potentially, for external customers as well.
Galen Hunt’s subsequent correction significantly revised his initial interpretation of his post, clarifying that Windows is not being rewritten in Rust using AI , and that his team’s project is part of research and experimentation , not part of an official new strategy for Windows 11 or Microsoft’s core products.
Hunt clarified that the group’s goal is to develop technologies that enable migration between programming languages , without indicating Rust as a definitive end point or a choice already adopted on a large scale. The original post, in his intentions, was aimed solely at seeking similar technical profiles for a multi-year collaboration, not to communicate a change in the company’s direction.
The correction therefore highlights a gap between the narrative that has emerged in the public debate and the actual state of the project: not an imminent rewrite of Microsoft systems, but a structural investment in tools, methods, and automation applied to software engineering.
However, one fact remains difficult to ignore. Beyond the clarifications, Microsoft’s underlying direction appears clear : the company is decisively focusing on integrating artificial intelligence into its code development, maintenance, and transformation processes. In a context marked by major restructuring and thousands of layoffs, AI is emerging as a central element of the group’s industrial and technical strategy.
The concrete future of software development at Microsoft is not yet fully defined, and the role of Rust remains, at present, an unknown . What is clear, however, is the overall vision: a company that intends to rethink the way software is built, evolved, and rewritten, entrusting artificial intelligence with an increasingly decisive role.
Follow us on Google News to receive daily updates on cybersecurity. Contact us if you would like to report news, insights or content for publication.
