Suleyman and his team will join from OpenAI rival Inflection AI

Microsoft Hires DeepMind Co-Founder to Run Consumer AI | Microsoft Corp. has named Mustafa Suleyman head of its consumer artificial intelligence business, hiring most of the staff from his Inflection AI startup as the software giant seeks to fend off Alphabet Inc.’s Google in the fiercely contested market for AI products.

Suleyman, who co-founded Google’s DeepMind, will report to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and oversee a range of projects, such as integrating an AI Copilot into Windows and adding conversational elements to the Bing search engine. His hiring will put Microsoft’s consumer AI work under one leader for the first time.

Inflection, a rival of Microsoft’s key AI partner OpenAI, is exiting its Pi consumer chatbot effort and shifting to selling AI software to businesses. Karén Simonyan, Inflection’s co-founder, will join Microsoft as chief scientist for the new consumer AI group.

In the past year, Nadella has been revamping his company’s major products around artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI. Under the Copilot brand, Microsoft has blended an AI assistant into products including Windows, consumer and enterprise Office software, Bing and security tools. With Google and others trying to catch up, Nadella’s multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI has given Microsoft a first-mover advantage. And yet, 13 months after unveiling an AI-enhanced Bing search, the company has made few gains in that market, which remains dominated by Google.

“We want to make sure that this next wave is one that for the consumer Microsoft can really, really create incredible products,” Suleyman said in an interview.

The new hires also mark another significant step by Microsoft to bolster its in-house AI capabilities and products, outside of the relationship with OpenAI. Last month, Microsoft invested $16 million in Mistral AI, a French rival to OpenAI. Nadella on Monday told OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about Suleyman and his team joining Microsoft, the company said. Microsoft Hires DeepMind Co-Founder to Run Consumer AI

(Source: Bloomberg)