Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's son dies

New Delhi: Tech giant Microsoft has said its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella's son Zain Nadella has died. Zain was 26 and was born with cerebral palsy. "Very sadly Satya's son Zain Nadella has passed away. The Nadellas are taking time to grieve privately as a family," a Microsoft spokesperson said in response to an email query by PTI.

Meanwhile, condolence messages poured in on social media platforms and many took to Twitter to mourn the demise. Nadella's son was born on August 13, 1996, in an emergency situation after his wife Anu during her thirty-sixth week of pregnancy noticed that the baby was not moving as in a normal situation. The Microsoft CEO in a blog in 2017 mentioned that Zain did not cry at the time of birth and had to be shifted to Seattle Children's Hospital with its state-of-the-art Neonatal Intensive Care Unit from the hospital in Bellevue across Lake Washington. Nadella had said he learnt that damage caused by utero asphyxiation caused severe cerebral palsy in his child. He also wrote that as a father of a son with special needs was the turning point of his life and helped him better understand the journey of people with disabilities.

Several political leaders in India expressed their condolences for the Nadella family. "Saddened to hear abt passing of @satyanadella's son Zain. My deepest condolences to him and his family n friends. I pray that God gives him n family the strength to bear wth this loss," Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a tweet. Satya Nadella is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of global software giant Microsoft. Hyderabad-born Nadella was named CEO of Microsoft in February 2014. In June 2021, he was also named as the company's Chairman, an additional role in which he would lead the work to set the agenda for the board.