Microsoft is going all in on artificial intelligence, that’s why they have invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and have Sam Altman on their payroll. But that wasn’t enough for them, that’s why they have now hired one of the great minds from Google in AI.
Microsoft has hired the co-founder of Google DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman. In a post on Twitter, Suleyman announced that he is joining Microsoft as CEO of a new team responsible for the company’s consumer-focused AI products, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.
Suleyman will also be the executive vice president of Microsoft AI and will join the company’s management team, which reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella. Suleyman co-founded the DeepMind AI lab in 2010, which was later acquired by Google in 2014.
DeepMind’s brain at the service of Microsoft
DeepMind has continued to be a pioneering force in AI within Google. However, Suleyman has not been part of the division for many years. He was placed on leave in 2019 due to controversy surrounding some of the projects he led, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and DeepMind opened an investigation into Suleyman for complaints of intimidating staff.
After being put on leave at DeepMind, Google announced that they had hired Suleyman as Vice President of AI Product Management and AI Policy. Suleyman left Google in 2022 to co-found the company Inflection AI.
In addition to hiring Suleyman, Microsoft is also bringing on board some of the employees from Inflection AI, such as co-founder Karén Simonyan, who will be the chief scientist of the consumer AI group. Kevin Scott will continue to serve as the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of AI at Microsoft.
Microsoft has invested billions in its partnership with OpenAI and recently reached an agreement with the AI startup Mistral. But the formation of a new AI team doesn’t mean that Microsoft has forgotten about these partnerships.
Microsoft states that it will “continue building an AI infrastructure that includes custom systems and silicon work in support of OpenAI’s base model roadmap”, as well as “creating products on top of their base models”.
