DeepMind Co-Founder to Lead Microsoft’s Consumer AI Efforts

Microsoft is forming a new AI division and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman is leading the efforts. 

Microsoft AI will merge its consumer-facing AI efforts, including its flagship Copilot product line designed to improve productivity by automating tasks like document summarization.

Suleyman will serve as CEO and will lead its product and research efforts. 

He will report directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who said he was “thrilled” to have Suleyman on board.

“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 organization on the planet, safely and responsibly. I’m looking forward to doing so with you,” Nadella wrote in a company blog post.

Microsoft’s Copilots, or AI assistant products, can help users draft emails and other content, analyze reports, create and edit images and find information, among other tasks. It already replaced Cortana, Microsoft’s old assistant application and now has a dedicated button on Windows 11 PCs.

Copilot also comes as a subscription service. 

Though Microsoft did not disclose the number of users it gained during its Q2 earnings call, the company expects adoption to grow over time. Nadella likened the present uptake to the early days of the PC.

Related:Microsoft’s Aggressive AI Push is Winning New Customers

Suleyman joins Microsoft from Inflection, an AI startup he cofounded that sought to challenge OpenAI with its Pi.ai chatbot which responds to user queries more empathetically than its rivals. Inflection had raised billions of dollars, securing funding from Microsoft and Nvidia.

Inflection co-founder Karén Simonyan is also joining the team and will serve as Microsoft AI’s chief scientist. Several Inflection staff have joined the pair at Microsoft, including a host of AI engineers and researchers. 

Sean White has become Inflection’s new CEO. White previously served as chief research and development officer at Mozilla, where he led research projects covering machine learning and AI assistants.