Fast Facts
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday that Microsoft is launching a new organization called “Microsoft AI.”
- The organization will be focused on consumer-facing AI products and research.
- Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind founder and Inflection co-founder, has departed Inflection to lead the new group.
Microsoft (MSFT) is forming a new organization, called Microsoft AI, that will focus on the company’s consumer-facing artificial intelligence products, technology and research.
CEO Satya Nadella said in a memo Tuesday that the shift comes as the company “must ensure we have the capability and capacity to boldly innovate.” Nadella said that Mustafa Suleyman, the founder of DeepMind and co-founder of Inflection AI, will lead the organization as its CEO.
He will be joined by fellow Inflection co-founder Karén Simonyan as the new organization’s chief scientist.
Related: Microsoft engineer says company asked him to delete an alarming discovery
Nadella added that several members of Inflection’s team, including AI engineers and researchers, will be joining Suleyman and Simonyan on the new team. Other Microsoft AI teams, including Copilot, Bing and Edge, will be bundled under this new organization and led by Suleyman.
“We have been operating with speed and intensity and this infusion of new talent will enable us to accelerate our pace yet again,” Nadella said. “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.”
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Another startup for Microsoft
At the same time, Inflection — which released an upgraded version of its personal AI chatbot Pi earlier in March — said that going forward, the company will “lean into our AI studio business,” pushing models designed for commercial, rather than personal, uses.
As part of this, Inflection said that it will now host its Inflection 2.5 model on Microsoft Azure. Inflection said that the model will come to other cloud hosting platforms soon.
Inflection said in a note that there will be “no immediate changes” to its Pi service, which is currently free for all users, adding that it is committed to “ensuring that users get ongoing access to great AI experiences in the future.”
The company added that its privacy and data policies remain “in place and unchanged.”
Computer scientist Dr. Sean White, who has previously worked in leadership positions at Nokia and Mozilla, among others, has taken over as Inflection’s CEO.
I’m excited to announce that today I’m joining @Microsoft as CEO of Microsoft AI. I’ll be leading all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing and Edge. My friend and longtime collaborator Karén Simonyan will be Chief Scientist, and several of our amazing…
— Mustafa Suleyman (@mustafasuleyman) March 19, 2024
The partnership is just the latest in a lengthening list of partnerships that Microsoft has made with AI startups; the most prominent of these, of course, is Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, which involved a more than $10 billion investment by the tech giant into the startup responsible for creating ChatGPT.
At the end of February, Microsoft announced a partnership with French AI startup Mistral, a deal that included a 15 million euro investment into the startup.
Both companies’ best models are accessible through Microsoft’s Azure platform.
In the midst of even more AI partnerships for Microsoft, the European Commission announced Jan. 9 that it is investigating Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI. The two companies had until March 11 to respond to the Commission’s request for information. Details of the investigation have yet to emerge.
“There’s no such thing as an AI startup, just guys with models competing to be absorbed by one of the three actual AI companies,” Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, said in a post on X.
The sector’s ongoing dive into AI integration comes amid mounting concerns regarding the harm in disinformation, fraud and discrimination that can be incited by its image generators, in addition to fiercely debated issues of copyright infringement.
Contact Ian with tips and AI stories via email, ian.krietzberg@thearenagroup.net, or Signal 732-804-1223.
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