Microsoft's AI Ambitions Propel DeepMind Co-Founder To Leadership Role

Microsoft Corporation MSFT announced Tuesday it was hiring Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of U.K. artificial intelligence lab DeepMind, which was acquired by Google GOOGL in 2014.

Suleyman will run a new consumer-facing AI unit to be called Microsoft AI, bringing together products such as Copilot, Bing and Edge. As CEO of the new unit, Suleyman will report directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Nadella said in a statement on Tuesday: “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.”

He added: “The work and product innovation we drive at this moment will define the next decade and beyond. Let us use this opportunity to build world-class AI products, like Copilot, that are loved by end-users.”

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Joined By Others From Inflection

Suleyman will be joined by Karen Simonyan, who will take on the role of chief scientist at Microsoft AI. Previously he was chief scientist at Inflection, a machine learning and generative AI (GenAI) company that he and Suleyman co-founded in 2022.

Indeed, several members of the Inflection team have chosen to join Suleyman and Simonyan at Microsoft AI.

Nadella said: “They include some of the most accomplished AI engineers, researchers, and builders in the world. They have designed, led, launched, and co-authored many of the most important contributions in advancing AI over the last five years.”

As part of the transition, Mikhail Parakhin and the entire staff of Copilot, Bing and Edge, and Misha Bilenko of the GenAI team with join Microsoft AI, reporting to Suleyman.

Suleyman And Simonyan Leave Inflection

At DeepMind, Suleyman and his team made headlines when, in 2016 they developed AlphaGo, a program that beat a human professional Go player.

After leaving DeepMind, Suleyman and Simonyan founded Inflection, along with venture capital technology entrepreneur Reid Hoffman. At Inflection, they built up a large language model called Pi. Other early investors in Inflection included Microsoft and Nvidia Corporation NVDA.

Inflection announced the departure of Suleyman and Simonyan and welcomed new CEO Sean White, who the company described as “a visionary leader poised to take Inflection into this new era.”

The appointment of Suleyman as head of Microsoft AI will have little or no impact on Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI.

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