Microsoft hires DeepMind co-founder to lead consumer AI unit

Mustafa Suleyman, a well-known leader and entrepreneur in artificial intelligence, will head the newly created unit.

Mustafa Suleyman, former CEO of Inflection AI and co-founder of DeepMind, will become the head of a newly created consumer AI unit at Microsoft. Picture: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP.

Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, a well-known leader and entrepreneur in artificial intelligence, to lead the software giant’s efforts on consumer AI products.

Mr Suleyman helped lead Google’s DeepMind, a pioneering artificial intelligence lab that the company acquired in 2014. He left Google and co-founded AI start-up Inflection AI, a start-up that was last valued at $US4bn ($6.1bn) and raised funding from investors including Microsoft and Nvidia. In a post on X, Mr Suleyman said he was stepping down from his position at Inflection AI.

Mr Suleyman will be reporting to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. He, along with his Inflection co-founder Karén Simonyan, will be leading a new organisation Microsoft is forming called Microsoft AI, which will focus on advancing its Copilot integration of AI into its products as well as its other consumer products and research. Hiring two founders of a well-funded start-up is an unusual move in Silicon Valley.

With Mr Suleyman’s move and Google’s AI division being led by his DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, two former members of the pivotal AI start-up are now playing key — and competing — roles at tech giants locked in an AI race.

In an email to Microsoft employees, Mr Nadella lauded Suleyman’s work as an engineer on AI. He also noted that several of Inflection’s employees would be joining Microsoft as part of this new division.

While at Google, Mr Suleyman was a controversial figure at times. In 2019, he was stripped of some management responsibilities after complaints he bullied staff. At the time, he said he had accepted feedback that he could drive people too hard and apologised to those who were affected.

Microsoft’s move helps clarify how the company is organising its AI strategy, which previously had sprawled across multiple divisions. Mr Suleyman will be overseeing AI tools for consumer products like Bing and Windows. Rajesh Jha, who leads its workplace software suite Microsoft 365, will oversee Copilots for that group. Kevin Scott, the company’s chief technology officer, will manage AI research and partnership efforts with companies like OpenAI.

Mr Scott has pioneered Microsoft’s AI strategy and has been key to its $US13bn investment in OpenAI. Mr Nadella said that in this new structure, he would continue to lean on Scott “to ensure that our AI strategy and initiatives are coherent across the breadth of Microsoft.”

The big new hires and creation of a new division come as Microsoft is diversifying its AI bets.

Last year, after OpenAI’s board of directors ousted its CEO, Sam Altman, Mr Nadella personally intervened to reinstate him. The episode, during which Microsoft’s share price swung wildly, highlighted how dependent the company was on the start-up and a technology it doesn’t own exclusively. Earlier this year, Microsoft invested in another AI start-up, Mistral AI.

In Mr Nadella’s email, he said the company was committed to its relationship with OpenAI.

Inflection has raised more than $US1.5bn in the past two years. One of its co-founders is investor Reid Hoffman, who is also a member of Microsoft’s board.

Inflection has built several AI products, including Pi, an AI assistant. As part of the announcement that Suleyman and Simonyan would be leaving for Microsoft, Inflection announced it was pivoting its focus to making its technology available to enterprises and developers.

The Wall Street Journal

Microsoft’s move helps clarify how the company is organising its AI strategy, which previously had sprawled across multiple divisions. Picture: Lionel Bonaventure/ AFP.