Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, one of the people who started DeepMind, which is part of Google, to lead a new team focusing on artificial intelligence for everyday people.
Suleyman, from Britain, helped start DeepMind in London in 2010. He will work under Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft. Their new group, called Microsoft AI, will bring together different products like Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, Edge, and GenAI.
This move by Microsoft is to take advantage of the growing interest in AI that can create new things. They’ve already put $13 billion into OpenAI, which made ChatGPT, and have been quickly using it in their own products.
Microsoft has been working on putting AI into things like Windows and Office software. Suleyman’s team will help with this, including adding Copilot into Windows and improving how Bing works with AI.
Nadella said, “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.”
DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014 for $500 million. Suleyman faced some problems later on at DeepMind, and in 2019 he left. He then went to Google before starting his own company, Inflection, in 2022.
Microsoft is also taking on most of the people from Inflection, including Karén Simonyan, who will be in charge of the science part of the AI team.
Inflection is now going to focus on selling AI software to businesses. Reid Hoffman, who started LinkedIn, will stay on the board of Inflection. The company raised $1.3 billion last June, making it worth about $4 billion.
This new team at Microsoft is a big change in how the company is set up. A group led by Mikhail Parakhin, who was in charge of web services, will now report to Suleyman.
Nadella said, “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 organisation on the planet, safely and responsibly.”
Officials in the US and Europe are watching closely to make sure Microsoft and OpenAI are playing fair with each other.
Source: FT
