Mustafa Suleyman, as we know, was the co-founder of AI research lab DeepMind. DeepMind since then has been acquired by Google in 2014. He continued to work in DeepMind until 2022. It wanted to create AI that will not veer into racist, sexist or violent behaviour. He left DeepMind in 2022 to cofound Inflection AI, an ML and generative AI company. Reid Hoffman (Greylock’s) too was a co-founder of Inflection AI. In 2023, Inflection AI launched a chatbot named ‘Pi’.

Microsoft has now appointed Suleyman (2024) as EVP and CEO of its newly created consumer AI unit, Microsoft AI. Several members of Inflection AI’s team have been appointed to the division, including co-founder Karen Simonyan.

He has co-written a book, The Coming Wave, that examines AI’s promise and the need to limit its potential perils.

The companies in AI space, namely Google, Microsoft and Apple are forming alliances so as to capitalize on generative AI. The idea is to generate revenue by marketing suitable consumer products and capture the market share. Each company does not have all the ingredients which can be assembled together to capitalize on generative AI. The ingredients are computing power, top-of-the-line AI models, trustworthy products and ways of getting them to people. The companies continue to search worldwide for talent and promising startups.

Google’s products have serious errors and biases. Microsoft has not been skilled at building exciting consumer products apart from video games. Apple is years behind in AI.

Big Tech is incapable of innovating the entire generative AI ecosystem single handedly.

Microsoft has infused AI into Bing search engine, Windows, Office and other products such as digital assistants under the Copilot brand.

This is the reason why Suleyman has been roped in. They went to craft in a true end-to-end product experience. Suleyman compares this to sculpting — recognizing when a piece of technology is ready and how to dress the experience that it becomes accessible and trusted.

Is Suleyman the right person to do this? He has developed a chatbot called Pi, which attracted a million active users. However, his startup Inflection never found a business case.