Microsoft is shoring up its consumer Copilot efforts with the addition of Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan to lead a new group called Microsoft AI. Suleyman and Simonyan were two of three co-founders of Inflection.ai.
Suleyman was also Co-founder of Google's DeepMind.
Inflection had a large language model, Inflection 2.5, that was behind the Pi, a personal AI. Pi apparently was more conversational. The addition of Suleyman and Simonyan creates a group solely focused on consumer AI products and research, notably Bing and Edge Copilots. Inflection AI announced $1.3 billion in funding with Microsoft and Nvidia as the lead investors in June. That round was led by Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, and new investor Nvidia. The company at the time said it was building the largest AI cluster with 22,000 Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs.
In a blog post, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said:
“Mustafa will be EVP and CEO, Microsoft AI, and joins the senior leadership team (SLT), reporting to me. Karén is joining this group as Chief Scientist, reporting to Mustafa...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."
Microsoft's consumer generative AI team will report to Mustafa.
Nadella was sure to note that Kevin Scott continues as CTO and EVP of AI and Rajesh Jha remains EVP of Experiences and Devices and in charge of Copilot for Microsoft 365.
A few takeaways:
- Microsoft was sure to note that "our AI innovation continues to build on our most strategic and important partnership with OpenAI," but it's clear there's some diversification going on with Inflection as well as the Mistral AI partnership.
- By calling out Scott and Jha, Microsoft is signaling Copilot stability to enterprises.
- Microsoft has led the generative AI wave for its consumer applications, but hasn't moved the market share needle vs. Google with Edge, Bing and Microsoft Advertising.
- The stakes for talent are obviously high as Nadella noted that "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."
- Microsoft is doubling down on home grown AI development.
