Co-founders of Inflection Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan are joining Microsoft to form a new organization called Microsoft AI, focused on advancing Copilot and our other consumer AI products and research.
In June 2023, Inflection revealed securing $1.3 billion in funding to develop its vision of ‘more personalised AI,’ with Microsoft as the primary investor.
“Today we are also announcing that two of our three co-founders, Mustafa and Karén, will be leaving Inflection to start Microsoft AI, a new division at Microsoft that will bring together their consumer AI efforts, as well as Copilot, Bing and Edge,” Inflection wrote in a blog post.
“. We’re grateful for all their amazing work in getting Inflection to this stage, and wish them luck for this new chapter.”
Mustafa will be EVP and CEO, Microsoft AI, and joins the senior leadership team (SLT), reporting to me, Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer, wrote in a communication today with Microsoft employees.
He added that Karén is joining this group as Chief Scientist, reporting to Mustafa.
“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,” said Nadella.
Karén, a Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Inflection, is a renowned AI researcher and thought leader, who has led the development of some of the biggest AI breakthroughs over the past decade including AlphaZero.
Several members of the Inflection team have chosen to join Mustafa and Karén at Microsoft. 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. I am excited for them to contribute their knowledge, talent, and expertise to our consumer AI research and product making.
“At our core, we have always been a platform and partner-led company, and we’ll continue to bring that sensibility to all we do. Our AI innovation continues to build on our most strategic and important partnership with OpenAI. We will continue to build AI infrastructure inclusive of custom systems and silicon work in support of OpenAI’s foundation model roadmap, and also innovate and build products on top of their foundation models. And today’s announcement further reinforces our partnership construct and principles,” said Nadella.
“As part of this transition, Mikhail Parakhin and his entire team, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge; and Misha Bilenko and the GenAI team will move to report to Mustafa. These teams are at the vanguard of innovation at Microsoft, bringing a new entrant energy and ethos, to a changing consumer product landscape driven by the AI platform shift. These organizational changes will help us double down on this innovation.”
Kevin Scott continues as CTO and EVP of AI, responsible for all-up AI strategy, including all system architecture decisions, partnerships, and cross-company orchestration. Kevin was the first person I leaned on to help us manage our transformation to an AI-first company and I’ll continue to lean on him to ensure that our AI strategy and initiatives are coherent across the breadth of Microsoft.
Rajesh Jha continues as EVP of Experiences & Devices and I’m grateful for his leadership as he continues to build out Copilot for Microsoft 365, partnering closely with Mustafa and team.
There are no other changes to the senior leadership team or other organisations.
“We have been operating with speed and intensity and this infusion of new talent will enable us to accelerate our pace yet again,” added Nadella.
“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.”
He added that Microsoft was in year two of the AI platform shift and must ensure we have the capability and capacity to boldly innovate.
“There is no franchise value in our industry and the work and product innovation we drive at this moment will define the next decade and beyond. Let us use this opportunity to build world-class AI products, like Copilot, that are loved by end-users! This is about science, engineering, product, and design coming together and embracing a learning mindset to push our innovation culture and product building process forward in fundamental ways.”
