• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 19, 2024

Microsoft has named Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google's DeepMind, executive vice president and CEO of its consumer artificial intelligence (AI) business unit.

Suleyman will report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and will oversee a range of projects, including the integration of AI Copilot into Windows and adding conversational features into the Bing search engine.

“This is about science, engineering, product, and design coming together and embracing a learning mindset to push our innovation culture and product building process forward in fundamental ways,” Nadella shared in a blog post on Tuesday.

As part of this transition, Microsoft said, for the first time the oversight of Microsoft’s consumer AI work will be placed under one executive.

Mikhail Parakhin and his entire team -- including Copilot, Bing, and Edge -- and Misha Bilenko and the generative AI (GAI) team will report to Mustafa.

The organizational changes will help Microsoft “double down on this innovation,” the company said.

Karén Simonyan also will join Suleyman to create the new business unit called Microsoft AI, focused on advancing Copilot and other consumer AI products and research.

Karén is joining the group as chief scientist, and will report to Mustafa. She is co-founder and chief scientist of Inflection, who has led the development of some of the biggest AI breakthroughs during the past decade including AlphaZero, a computer program that teaches itself to play games like chess.

Inflection -- a rival of Microsoft’s key AI partner OpenAI -- is sunsetting its Pi consumer chatbot effort and shifting to selling AI software to businesses.

Several Inflection team members will join the AI business unit. These AO engineers have designed, led, launched, and co-authored many of the most important contributions in advancing AI during the last five years, according to Nadella.

Kevin Scott continues as Microsoft CTO and executive vice president of AI, responsible for AI strategies including all system architecture decisions, partnerships, and cross-company orchestration.

Rajesh Jha continues as executive vice president of experiences & devices, and will continue to build out Copilot for Microsoft 365, partnering closely with Mustafa and the team.

“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,” Nadella wrote.