Mustafa Suleyman joins Microsoft to lead the new Microsoft AI

Background

By early 2024 Microsoft had already built Copilot products, including the AI-powered Bing and Copilot for Microsoft 365, across several teams. Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan were co-founders of Inflection AI, the company behind the Pi chatbot, which Microsoft brought in-house by hiring its founders.

What happened

On 19 March 2024 Satya Nadella told employees that Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan were joining Microsoft to form a new organisation, Microsoft AI.^[1]

Suleyman became EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI and joined the senior leadership team reporting to Nadella. Simonyan became chief scientist, reporting to Suleyman.^[1]

Several Inflection team members joined them. Both founders had co-founded Inflection AI, the maker of the Pi chatbot.^[1][3]

Key details

Microsoft AI was given Copilot and other consumer AI products and research. Mikhail Parakhin's Copilot, Bing and Edge teams and Misha Bilenko's GenAI team moved under it.^[1]

Kevin Scott remained CTO and EVP of AI, and Rajesh Jha continued to build Copilot for Microsoft 365.^[1]

Nadella said Microsoft's AI work would continue to build on its partnership with OpenAI.^[1]

On 7 April 2024 Microsoft AI opened a London hub led by Jordan Hoffmann.^[2]

Impact

The new organisation separated consumer AI work from the enterprise Copilot work led by Rajesh Jha, while the wider AI strategy stayed tied to OpenAI. Later leadership changes, including the unification of Copilot, were built on this structure.^[1][2]

Why a separate organisation

Large companies often group related work into separate organisations so that each has a clear leader and a clear product goal. Before this change, consumer Copilot work and enterprise Copilot work were spread across several teams. Creating Microsoft AI gave the consumer products and the research under one leader, who reported to the chief executive. This is a common structure when a company wants to move quickly on a new product area while keeping its existing business in place.^[1]

Who the people were

Co-founders of a start-up often bring their core team with them when they join a larger company. In this case, Inflection's founders took on senior roles in the new organisation, and several of the start-up's staff followed them. Inflection had built the Pi chatbot, so the move combined that product experience with Microsoft's scale.^[1][3]

Reading the structure

The decision kept Microsoft's wider AI strategy tied to OpenAI, as Nadella stated in the same announcement. Readers can therefore see the 2024 organisation as a division of labour: one part of Microsoft's AI work was consumer-facing and built its own products, while the enterprise work and the OpenAI partnership continued alongside it.^[1][2]