Hardwood timber
Steven Sinofsky warned Microsoft that its flagship Surface was about to flop in public, then sought exit advice from Jeffrey Epstein as he negotiated his way out of Redmond.
These details appear in newly released Department of Justice files linked to Epstein, which include emails showing the former Windows boss seeking advice on money, leverage, and what to do next after his abrupt 2012 exit.
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There’s no suggestion of criminal behavior by Sinofsky. The exchanges with Epstein offer a rare glimpse at how a senior Microsoft executive sized up failure, and the cost of walking away from it.
The trigger was the Surface RT, Microsoft’s first real attempt to muscle into Apple’s hardware turf. By November 2012, Sinofsky was warning internally that it was going sideways fast.
In an email to CEO Steve Ballmer and COO Kevin Turner, he said the device was “about to catastrophically fail in a very public way,” with sales tracking at roughly one-tenth of even the lowest expectations. Once the numbers escaped, he added, there would be no hiding it. “Word will get out very soon. There is no long term without this.”
Nine days later, Sinofsky was gone.
Months later, Sinofsky forwarded the same email chain to Jeffrey Epstein, pointing out that Microsoft had gone on to write off $900 million in unsold Surface inventory – more than it had originally planned.
What followed was a series of practical, unsentimental emails about money and constraints. Sinofsky sent Epstein his full retirement agreement, complaining that Microsoft was fixated on restrictive non-competes and reluctant to grant full vesting of stock awards. Unsure what leverage he still had, he asked outright. Epstein’s answer was clear and repeated across messages: ask for $20 million and don’t budge.
“Just repeat 20,” Epstein advised. “Do not let [them] talk you down.”
In the end, Sinofsky walked away with a retirement package worth about $14 million in stock. When details of the deal emerged months later, Epstein chimed in with a short note of his own: “You’re welcome :).”
The emails also detail Sinofsky’s unease about life after Microsoft. He floated the idea of working at Samsung, then immediately worried about being sued. Microsoft, he noted, had a long history of dragging former executives into court under the theory of “inevitable leakage of trade secrets,” filing public, bruising, and professionally disabling cases even when defendants eventually prevailed.
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“I have been part of a dozen lawsuits filed after Microsoft people went to competitors. It is nasty, public, and ultimately Microsoft prevailed in all of them,” Sinofsky said. “Either the person backed down or ended up so tarnished they were ineffective.”
Epstein offered to help smooth that path for a $1 million fee, suggesting he could manage internal politics and keep Ballmer from “trashing” Sinofsky in public. Sinofsky ultimately did not join Samsung.
Windows 8 is still Windows 8, and Surface RT remains an expensive mistake. The emails don’t change that. What they do offer is a less polished view of how a senior Microsoft exit actually played out once things started going wrong. It was an executive calling a looming disaster, losing the argument, and then negotiating the terms of getting out, with advice from a fixer whose name now comes with baggage. ®