The US Federal Reserve has appointed Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma to a newly formed "Productivity and Jobs" taskforce charged with assessing the economic impact of new technologies, including artificial intelligence. The appointment is notable both for its high profile — Sharma sits alongside venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Stanford economist Charles I. Jones — and for its timing, coming just days after she launched a sweeping restructure of Microsoft's gaming division that has resulted in large-scale job losses.

Sharma, who moved from Microsoft's Core AI group to replace Phil Spencer as Xbox boss earlier in 2026, oversaw 1,600 redundancies announced on the Monday of that week, with a further 1,600 cuts planned across the current financial year. Four Xbox studios have already left Microsoft, and projects have been cancelled. Her "Reset" plan focuses on profit growth via major franchises such as Halo, Minecraft and Fallout, cutting management to no more than five layers and reducing vendor spend by 50%; notably, one of her first moves was to scrap Microsoft's Copilot gaming AI tool, though she has said she believes in AI's potential. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said the taskforces would examine whether policymakers' tools and approaches could be improved.