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On March 19, local time, Microsoft, which has become the world's most valuable listed company by virtue of the wave of artificial intelligence (AI), announced a major organizational restructuring: the establishment of Microsoft AI to unify the management of consumer AI products and research work.

The person in charge of this new department is Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI. His joining has undoubtedly added a force to be reckoned with to Microsoft's AI empire.

According to Microsoft's announcement, Suleyman's position is executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft AI, and he will join Microsoft's senior leadership team (SLT) and report directly to Microsoft CEO Nadella. Next, Copilot, Bing, Edge, and the generative AI team will all report to Suleyman.

Unlike technology geeks like Jensen Huang and Elon Musk, Suleyman actively devoted himself to social welfare in the early days of his career, adhering to the belief of "playing a social role".

Suleyman was born in 1984. His father is a Syrian-born taxi driver and his mother is a British nurse. He grew up in London and studied philosophy and theology at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. At the age of 19, Suleyman dropped out of school and began to focus on solving real-world problems.

In 2010, Suleyman co-founded AI company DeepMind with his university classmate Demis Hassabis, hoping to have a positive impact on the world, and thus started his journey in the AI field.

In 2014, DeepMind was acquired by Google for a transaction value of about 400 million pounds, and later developed into a leading AI research institution. Suleyman was then responsible for integrating the company's technology into multiple Google products, and participated in research collaborations with multiple medical institutions in the UK, promoting the application of AI in the healthcare field.

However, according to reports, in 2019, Suleyman was suspended and even investigated by the company for his involvement in some controversial projects. In addition, he was also accused of bullying employees, which had a certain impact on his reputation.

In January 2022, Suleyman left Google, but he did not give up his original intention of "playing a social role", but continued to devote himself to a new entrepreneurial journey. In March of the same year, Suleyman co-founded Inflection AI with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and DeepMind former senior researcher Karen Simonyan.

According to Crunchbase data, at the end of June 2023, Inflection AI completed a new round of financing of up to $1.3 billion, led by Microsoft, Nvidia and three billionaires (Reid Hoffman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt), becoming a unicorn AI company in Silicon Valley.

According to informed sources, Microsoft has agreed to pay Inflection AI $650 million, mainly for the license of its artificial intelligence software. Suleyman himself was also recognized by Microsoft and was invited to lead Microsoft's AI team.

"Throughout my life, I have always focused on maximizing the social impact of everything I do," Suleyman has told the media more than once.

It is worth noting that when Suleyman joined Microsoft this time, he also took away most of the employees of Inflection AI. At the same time, Karen Simonyan, co-founder and chief scientist of Inflection AI, will also join Microsoft and serve as chief scientist of Microsoft AI department.