Microsoft added some big names to its AI leadership Tuesday with the hiring of Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and a former Google vice president of artificial intelligence, to lead a new organization called Microsoft AI.
Suleyman, most recently co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI, will serve as a Microsoft executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft AI, reporting to Microsoft CEO Nadella and joining the company’s senior leadership team, according to a memo from CEO Satya Nadella made public by the company.
Microsoft AI will be focused on “advancing Copilot and our other consumer AI products and research,” Nadella wrote in the memo, referring to the company’s primary brand for its AI technologies.
Also joining the company will be Karén Simonyan, the Inflection chief scientist and co-founder, known for leading the development of AI projects including AlphaZero, AlphaFold, and WaveNet, among others.
Several others from Inflection will also be joining Microsoft.
“We have been operating with speed and intensity and this infusion of new talent will enable us to accelerate our pace yet again,” Nadella wrote. “We have a real shot to build technology that was once thought impossible and that lives up to our mission to ensure the benefits of AI reach every person and organization on the planet, safely and responsibly.”
DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014. Suleyman left Google in January 2022.
Microsoft, which is competing against Google, Amazon and others for AI talent and innovations, previously contemplated creating a new AI organization as a landing spot for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others working for its key strategic partner when Altman was temporarily ousted by the prior OpenAI board last year.
