Microsoft has poached Inflection AI's co-founders, along with "several" of the startup's employees, to lead the tech giant's artificial intelligence efforts from a newly formed division called Microsoft AI.
Inflection CEO Mustafa Suleyman and chief scientist Karén Simonyan are joining Microsoft amid a heated race to dominate the AI sector.
Microsoft was one of several investors that led Inflections' $1.3 billion Series B round last year, which valued the startup at $4 billion and brought the Palo Alto company's total funding to just under $1.6 billion.
The tech giant has also poured at least $13 billion into OpenAI. During that AI startup's leadership crisis last year, Microsoft at one point said it had hired OpenAI's Sam Altman, who had been fired by the startup's board, to lead its AI research efforts, a premature announcement overtaken by Altman's restoration to the role of OpenAI CEO.
Suleyman, a former Google Deepmind researcher, will become executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft AI and Simonyan will be the division's chief scientist, Microsoft announced in a press release.
Microsoft also said that "several" other members from Inflection who were "some of the most accomplished AI engineers, researchers, and builders in the world" would be joining Microsoft, as well.
Microsoft AI will be "focused on advancing Copilot and our other consumer AI products and research," the announcement said.
"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," Suleyman wrote on LinkedIn. "It’s been an amazing journey, with so much more to come. Thank you to everyone for your support. Things really are just getting started."
Inflection confirmed the news in a blog post on Tuesday and also announced its new CEO Sean White.
White was the Chief R&D Officer at Mozilla for several years until 2020, according to LinkedIn.
Inflection is also shifting more towards an enterprise focus but didn't say if or when its consumer chatbot, Pi, would be deprecated.
"We are hugely proud of what we’ve achieved with Pi. There will be no immediate changes to the service and we’re committed to ensuring that users get ongoing access to great AI experiences in the future," Inflection said in a blog post.
A report from Bloomberg News described the pivot as an exit from consumer products.
"As an AI studio we have long planned to make our technology available to developers and enterprises," Inflection wrote on its blog. "There is a huge opportunity for Inflection here. Our plan going forward is to lean into our AI studio business, where custom generative AI models are crafted, tested and fine tuned for commercial customers."
Suleyman and Simonyan co-founded Inflection in 2022 with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman who remains on Inflection's board. Hoffman had also served on OpenAI's board, stepping down last year to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest with his involvement in Inflection.
