Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind, to join the company as the CEO of its newly created AI division. Suleyman will have the responsibility of overseeing the development of consumer-facing AI products such as Copilot, Bing, and Edge, and will also serve as executive vice president of Microsoft AI, directly reporting to CEO Satya Nadella.
Suleyman will be accompanied by several employees from Inflection AI, the company he co-founded in 2022. Among them is Karén Simonyan, who co-founded Inflection AI and created AlphaZero. Simonyan will serve as the chief scientist of the consumer AI group. Mikhail Parakhin and Misha Bileno, who currently lead the teams working on Copilot, Bing, and Edge, will now report to Suleyman.
In a memo to employees, Nadella expressed his admiration for Suleyman, stating that he has known him for several years and greatly admired him as a founder of both DeepMind and Inflection. He added that Microsoft has a real shot to build technology that was once thought impossible and to ensure the benefits of AI reach everyone on the planet safely and responsibly.
I’ve known Mustafa for several years and have greatly admired him as a founder of both DeepMind and Inflection, and as a visionary, product maker, and builder of pioneering teams that go after bold missions, Nadella wrote in the memo.
Suleyman joined Google in 2014 when the search giant acquired DeepMind for $50 million and served as Google’s vice president of product management and policy for AI. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI, which recently raised $1.3 billion last year following the launch of its personal chatbot, Pi.
Microsoft’s hiring of Suleyman comes amidst significant investments in artificial intelligence. The company has invested billions in its partnership with OpenAI and recently struck a deal with AI startup Mistral. Despite the formation of the new AI team, Microsoft emphasises that it will continue to build AI infrastructure to support OpenAI’s foundation model roadmap and innovate products based on their foundation models.
Kevin Scott remains CTO and EVP of AI, responsible for our AI strategy. Rajesh Jha continues as EVP of Experiences & Devices, leading Copilot for Microsoft 365 with Mustafa.
Sean White has been named the new CEO of Inflection AI, while Reid Hoffman, the third co-founder of the AI firm, will remain on board.
