Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan, co-founders of high-profile AI startup Inflection AI, and several of their colleagues as the Satya Nadella-led cloud giant continues its aggressive push to attract top talent.
Suleyman — also a co-founder of DeepMind, which Google bought in 2014 to bolster its own AI efforts — will run Microsoft’s newly formed unit called Microsoft AI, whereas Simonyan is joining the company as a chief scientist in the same new group. Mustafa, whose official title at Microsoft is EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI, will report to chief executive Nadella.
Suleyman will also lead AI products and research for Copilot, Bing and Edge, he wrote in a tweet.
“Several members of the Inflection team have chosen to join Mustafa and Karén at Microsoft,” Nadella wrote in a blog post. “They include some of the most accomplished AI engineers, researchers, and builders in the world. They have designed, led, launched, and co-authored many of the most important contributions in advancing AI over the last five years.”
Inflection AI is one of the most prominent AI startups. It was founded in 2022 by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Suleyman. The startup seeks to develop AI systems that can engage in open-ended dialogue, answer questions, and assist with a variety of tasks. In 2022, Inflection AI raised $225 million in a Series A funding round led by Hoffman’s VC firm Greylock Partners, along with participation from Microsoft, Google Ventures.
In a blog post, Inflection AI said that it will shift its focus to the AI studio business, where it builds and tests customer generative AI models. “This renewed emphasis on our API also comes with some important changes in the company,” wrote Inflection AI.
As part of the transition/situation, Inflection AI said it will host Inflection-2.5 on Microsoft Azure, something it said will help to reach “creators everywhere.” It added: “We’ll also be ensuring it comes to other cloud hosting platforms in the near future. The API itself isn’t available today, but will be up and running very soon.”