Xamarin Co-founder Miguel de Icaza Says Goodbye to Microsoft

Miguel de Icaza, the co-founder of the open source mobile app platform Xamarin is leaving Microsoft six years after the Redmond giant acquired his company. The news was first reported by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, and the Xamarin co-founder has since confirmed the news himself on Twitter.

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of Xamarin, De Icaza became a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. According to ZDNet, De Icaza was recently working on the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX), an open standard for representing machine learning models created by Microsoft and a community of partners.

On Twitter, De Icaza said that his next projects after Microsoft would include “resting, reading and playing all the things I haven’t had a chance to play.” However, the Xamarin co-founder told ZDNet that he may eventually go back to the startup world.

“If I wanted to work for a big company, I would have stayed here (at Microsoft). It is awesome here,” De Icaza said. “I learned a lot, it was good, but I do miss the startup world, and building and running a team – which I have not been doing here in this role.”

De Icaza’s departure from Microsoft will follow a similar move from Nat Friedman, the previous CEO of Xamarin. Friedman became GitHub’s new CEO after Microsoft acquired the company back in 2018, but he eventually left the company back in November 2021.