Varshine
Sridharan

AI Product Builder — turning frontier models into products people trust.
Zero to one, shipped to hundreds of millions.

Varshine builds products at platform shifts.
Founding PM of Microsoft’s first frontier reasoning agent, Researcher.
Now redefining how products get built in the AI era — across Enterprise and Consumer tech.

Varshine Sridharan

The Work

Enterprise scale to the frontier.

01

Products Used by Millions

Researcher. Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Xbox Support. Twilio Segment.

From enterprise AI infrastructure to everyday work surfaces — shipped across both.

02

Zero to One Products

Microsoft: Customer Service Copilot, on early GPT models.
Twilio: Segment Integrations Contributors program.

New products stood up from scratch — and grown to millions of users. Built the playbook when none existed.

03

Zero to One AI Agents

Researcher: Microsoft’s first frontier reasoning agent.
Model Council: multi-model deliberation, in production.

From 0→1 launch to one of the most-used enterprise deep research agents. Not adopting AI — defining how agentic products get built.

Work

Frontier agents, shipped.

Nine years building products; six building 0-to-1 AI, agentic, ML, and data products. Hands-on builder at the intersection of product, UX, research, engineering, safety, and GTM.

Researcher · Founding PM

Microsoft’s First Frontier Reasoning Agent

Founded and launched Researcher 0→1 in Microsoft 365 Copilot — a long-horizon agent for multi-step deep research across web and enterprise data, built with OpenAI Research. Own product strategy, UX, core quality, and AI safety, including the first joint Microsoft × OpenAI Deployment Safety Board review. Now one of the most-used enterprise deep research agents in the world.

Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot — the model picker showing Auto, Critique, Model Council, and Claude
Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot · model picker featuring Model Council
microsoft.com · Microsoft 365 Blog
Introducing Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot
techcrunch.com · TechCrunch
Microsoft adds AI-powered deep research tools to Copilot
news.microsoft.com · Microsoft Source
6 surprising ways a new AI agent can help you crush it at work

Multi-Model Systems · AI Builder

Model Council, Critique & Claude in Copilot

Lead Researcher’s multi-model strategy: launched model choice by bringing Claude into Researcher, shipped the Critique capability, and envisioned and built Model Council — frontier models reason over the same task while a judge synthesizes the best answer. Pioneered PM-led prompt tuning at Microsoft, independently owning the prototype, system prompt, evaluations, and tuning.

techcommunity.microsoft.com · Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog
Introducing multi-model intelligence in Researcher
linkedin.com · Satya Nadella
“New in M365 Copilot: Council…”

Quality, Evals & Post-Training

The Agent-Quality Flywheel

Built and operationalized the agent-quality flywheel — eval sets, rubric graders, golden outputs, and calibrated LLM-as-judge scoring — and scaled the expert human-evaluation program into a post-training data pipeline. Shipped Microsoft’s first in-house post-trained deep research model, deployed across public and Gov clouds.

Beyond the product

01

Forward-Deployed

Drove the Gates Foundation’s adoption of Researcher for vaccine research, operating hands-on as a forward-deployed engineer.

02

Claude in Copilot

Launched the Claude model family in Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of leading Microsoft’s multi-model strategy.

03

Now Building

Model orchestration for intelligent auto-routing across model families by user task, while optimizing compute.

Customer Service Copilot · Support AI/ML

AI for Customer Service, on Early GPT Models

Led productization and growth of Dynamics 365 Customer Service Copilot — conversational AI for enterprise support built on early GPT models. Ideated and launched AI ticket summarization, case timeline highlights, and inline email assist within case management. Built ML-based automated ticket creation across ~50M annual support cases.

microsoft.com · Dynamics 365 Blog
Announcing Microsoft Copilot for Service
microsoft.com · Dynamics 365 Blog
Transform customer support with case summary auto-enablement

Segment Data Platform

Integrations at Platform Scale

Built integrations with Google, Salesforce, Meta, and Adobe, and developed the Integrations Contributors program opening Segment’s platform to partner teams. Launched Multi-Instance Destinations — a cross-team effort spanning 30+ services and one of the platform’s largest launches.

Windows Developer Technologies

Where Product Sense Started

Advised and architected solutions for 25 large enterprises across Asia — 400+ hours of technical consultation. Translated recurring user needs into product capabilities and presented brownbag sessions at 30+ customer sites on web development, virtualization, and Azure.

Education

01

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Master of Science, Technology Management · 2019–2020

02

SASTRA University

Bachelor of Technology, Computer Science · 2012–2016

Method — how I ship agents

A dot grid. One unbroken line.

A kolam is drawn fresh each morning: dots first, then a single continuous line that loops through every one without lifting. Good agent development is the same shape — the loop only works if it never breaks.

01

Prototype

Build the smallest real thing. Working demos beat decks — hack week is a legitimate ship vehicle.

02

Prompt

The system prompt is product surface. Behavior specs live in the prompt, and I author the ones we ship.

03

Evaluate

LLM-as-judge plus calibrated human panels. Taste becomes rubrics; rubrics become graders.

04

Ship

Behavior spec, safety review, launch call. Frontier capability earns trust through rigor.

05

Hill-climb

Findings become the next roadmap bet — and the line returns to the first dot.

Taste, made measurable.

If quality can’t be scored, it can’t be improved. I turn “this feels better” into datasets, assertions, and rubric graders a team can climb.

Prompts are product.

The words a model reasons with shape everything users feel. I write production system prompts myself — and defend them with evals, not opinions.

Safety is a launch feature.

I led Microsoft’s first joint deployment safety review with OpenAI. Trust is what lets frontier capability reach millions of people at work.

Personal

Personal AI projects — off the clock, still building.

Write-ups in progress — the interesting ones take a minute. Check back soon.

Project · 01

Write-up in progress.

Project · 02

Write-up in progress.

Project · 03

Write-up in progress.

A note on depth

Much of this work ships behind the enterprise wall.

Frontier agent quality, model orchestration, and safety work is confidential by nature. The real depth is in the conversations — happy to go there.

Currently

Let’s build agents people trust.

Leading product for frontier AI agents at Microsoft AI — Researcher, multi-model strategy, and agent quality in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Writing the prompts, building the evals, making the ship calls.

Open to  conversations about frontier AI product leadership, speaking, and collaborations in AI × product.