Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan, co-founders of high-profile AI startup Inflection AI, and a team of highly accomplished colleagues, to form Microsoft AI to lead Copilot and other consumer AI products and research.

Suleyman, also a co-founder of DeepMind, which was purchased by Google in 2014, will be EVP and CEO of the new organisation, and will report to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, while Simonyan, a renowned AI researcher and thought leader, will take up the role of Chief Scientist, reporting to Suleyman.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot

In a blog Nadella confirmed that the team chosen to join Suleyman and Simonya will include “some of the accomplished AI engineers, researchers, and builders in the world, who have designed, led, launched, and co-authored many of the most important contributions in advancing AI over the last five years”.

“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,” he said.

Suleyman will also lead AI products and research for Copilot, Bing and Edge, he wrote in a tweet.

Inflection AI, a technology company which develops machine learning and generative artificial intelligence hardware and apps, was founded in 2022 by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Suleyman.

In June last year, the company raised $1.3 billion in a fresh round of funding led by Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, and new investor NVIDIA. At the time of the funding, Inflection AI said was building the largest AI cluster in the world, featuring 22,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs.

Microsoft is expected to highlight its latest AI advances for consumers in an event focused on Microsoft Copilot, Windows, and Surface this week.