Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Inflection and Google’s Deepmind, has been hired by Microsoft to lead Microsoft's consumer AI division, Microsoft AI. Inflection’s co-founder and Chief Scientist, Karén Simonyan, accompanies Suleyman in the move and will report to him.
Suleyman and Simonyan’s team will take the lead on Copilot and other consumer AI products and research. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in an email to employees that ‘several members of the Inflection team have chosen to join Mustafa and Karén at Microsoft’.
He noted: “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.”
Microsoft has close ties with Inflection, having previously closed a $1.3B funding round led by Reid Hoffman and Bill Gates. Their acquisition of Inflection’s talent will reinforce Microsoft’s commanding stature among AI companies given the impact it has had on the direction of both Inflection and OpenAI, often touted as two of a ‘new generation’ of software giants. Open AI went through its own restructure in November, when CEO Sam Altman was temporarily removed.
Without Suleyman, Inflection will refocus with ‘renewed emphasis on API’, shifting away from its Pi model to build and test generative models for other businesses.
Suleyman tweeted: “It’s been an amazing journey, with so much more to come.”
Lead image: Wikipedia
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments