- Mustafa Suleyman is a co-founder of DeepMind, which became a leading artificial intelligence research lab after Google bought it in 2014.
- Suleyman is becoming executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft AI, a new group that will include Copilot, which appears in Windows, Bing, and other products.
Microsoft has appointed DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a newly created consumer AI unit and hired several employees from his Inflection AI startup.
Leaving Google
Suleyman’s DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 for US$500 million and the company was fully merged with Google’s own AI research department last year.
Inside Google, DeepMind became a leader in AI research, receiving coverage in the journal Nature and extensive media attention.
Suleyman left Google parent Alphabet in 2022 and became co-founder and CEO of startup Inflection AI, a startup he co-founded that became a promising rival to OpenAI and Anthropic in building the models that deliver ChatGPT-style AI.
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The new cooperation with Microsoft
“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,” Suleyman said in a post on X.
Suleyman said he would be leaving his role as chief executive of Inflection.
Karén Simonyan, a co-founder of Inflection and its chief scientist, is also joining Microsoft as chief scientist for Microsoft AI, alongside several of the startup’s employees, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“We have been operating with speed and intensity and this infusion of new talent will enable us to accelerate our pace yet again,” Nadella said in a blog post.
He also mentioned AI innovation at Microsoft would still depend on its partnership with OpenAI, the company led by Sam Altman where Microsoft invested US$13 billion last year.
With the hire, Microsoft is expanding its already leading position in the AI industry.
