Google DeepMind & Inflection AI founder Mustafa Suleyman Joins Microsoft

Microsoft has made a significant move in the AI space by appointing Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google's DeepMind and founder of Inflection AI, as the CEO of Microsoft AI. Suleyman will lead all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

This appointment comes at a time when the company will be hosted on Microsoft Azure 2.5 and follows a period of turmoil at OpenAI in November. After Sam Altman was temporarily ousted as the CEO of the ChatGPT creator, Nadella announced him as the CEO of Microsoft AI and expressed willingness to absorb the entirety of OpenAI if necessary. It is clear that Nadella was thinking in terms of having a pioneer in the space of generative AI as its AI boss, and now that has happened in a surprising way with Suleyman's appointment.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Suleyman expressed his excitement about joining Microsoft, stating, "I'm excited to announce that today I'm joining Microsoft as CEO of Microsoft AI. I'll be leading all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge. My friend and longtime collaborator Karén Simonyan will be Chief Scientist, and several of our amazing teammates have chosen to join us."

Microsoft CEO and Chairman Satya Nadella welcomed Suleyman to the company, saying, "Welcome to Microsoft, Mustafa Suleyman. Thrilled to have you lead Microsoft AI as we build consumer AI, like Copilot, that is loved by and benefits people around the world."

Suleyman's appointment comes at a time when Microsoft is heavily investing in AI. The company has a 49% stake in OpenAI and recently acquired a stake in French generative AI startup Mistral AI, valued at $500 million. Microsoft is building an AI platform that includes custom systems and is working on silicon to support AI startups like OpenAI.

Inflection AI, which Suleyman founded in 2022, had secured $1.3 billion in investment in June 2023. However, with Suleyman and chief scientist Karen Simonyan leaving to join Microsoft AI, the company is losing two of its co-founders. Sean White will take over as CEO of Inflection AI while the third co-founder Reid Hoffman, who is also on the Microsoft board, will remain on the Infection AI board.

Suleyman's departure from DeepMind in 2022 followed a controversy surrounding some of the projects he led, with complaints of staff bullying that led to him being placed on leave in 2019. Inflection AI, which Suleyman founded after leaving DeepMind, is a conversational LLM with high emotional intelligence, akin to a super-smart voice-based assistant with perfect dialect and extensive conversational ability.

Microsoft has been infusing AI across its products since the unveiling of Bing Chat in February 2023, which reinvigorated the Bing Search engine and pushed Google to double down on generative AI. Bing Chat, now called Co-pilot, has been integrated into almost every major Microsoft product, including Office, Windows, and the Edge browser.

This week, Microsoft is set to hold a special event to detail its AI plans for Windows and Surface hardware, further solidifying its commitment to AI across its product lines.