Microsoft Taps Google DeepMind Co-Founder to Lead its New Consumer AI Unit

Microsoft has appointed DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a newly created consumer AI unit and hired several employees of his Inflection AI startup, seeking to defend its lead against rising competition from Google.

Suleyman will be CEO of the unit, Microsoft AI, the company said on Tuesday, bringing under one roof its consumer AI efforts such as its Copilot chatbot and the new Bing browser that uses the technology.

The Copilot, built using technology from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, is the lynchpin of Microsoft's efforts to generate revenue from its AI efforts and can write emails, summarize documents and make presentations.