Mustafa Suleyman
Executive Vice President and CEO, Microsoft AI
DeepMind and Inflection AI
Mustafa Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014[1]. At DeepMind he led applied research and commercialisation, working across AI research and development, healthcare, ethics, policy and product development with Google[1].
He later co-founded Inflection AI and served as its chief executive[1]. Inflection trained models including Inflection-2.5 and built Pi, a personal AI[1]. Karén Simonyan was Inflection's co-founder and chief scientist[2].
Leading Microsoft AI
On 19 March 2024 Satya Nadella announced that Suleyman and Simonyan were joining Microsoft to form a new organisation called Microsoft AI, focused on Copilot and other consumer AI products and research[2]. Suleyman became executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft AI, joining Microsoft's senior leadership team and reporting to Nadella[2]. Simonyan joined as chief scientist, reporting to Suleyman, and several members of the Inflection team moved to Microsoft with them[2].
On 6 November 2025 Suleyman announced the MAI Superintelligence Team, a group within Microsoft AI that he leads[3][4]. Fortune reported that Microsoft's earlier agreement with OpenAI had limited its ability to pursue its own most advanced models, and that this was changing[4].
On 17 March 2026 Microsoft changed the leadership of its Copilot organisation[5]. Jacob Andreou became executive vice president for the Copilot experience across consumer and commercial products, reporting to Nadella[5]. Nadella wrote that Suleyman would continue to lead the superintelligence effort and the work to build Microsoft's own AI models, reporting to him[5]. Suleyman also joined a new Copilot leadership team with Andreou, Ryan Roslansky, Perry Clarke and Charles Lamanna[5].
At Microsoft's Build developer conference in June 2026, the Microsoft AI Superintelligence Team unveiled seven models built from scratch, covering image, voice, transcription, coding and reasoning[6]. Suleyman described the effort as being about long-term self-sufficiency for Microsoft and its partners[6]. GeekWire reported that the flagship, MAI-Thinking-1, was trained without distillation from other companies' models and was available in private preview on Microsoft Foundry[6]. Microsoft AI's website lists models including MAI-Thinking-1, MAI-Code-1.1-Flash, MAI-Voice-2.1 and MAI-Transcribe-2[7].
Humanist superintelligence
In his November 2025 post Towards Humanist Superintelligence, Suleyman defined the goal as advanced AI capabilities that always work in service of people and humanity[3]. He described these as problem-oriented, often domain-specific systems rather than an unbounded entity with high autonomy[3]. In the same post he wrote that Microsoft AI rejects narratives about a race to AGI[3][4].
The post also argues that containment and alignment have to be worked on by commercial labs, start-ups and governments together, and that no one he had met had a reassuring answer on how to guarantee such systems are safe[3]. His personal website describes the mission of Microsoft AI as building state-of-the-art AI models and creating humanist superintelligence for everyone[1].
The Coming Wave and other roles
Suleyman wrote The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma, which was published in September 2023[1]. The book's website presents it alongside Michael Bhaskar, a UK writer and publisher[8]. In it Suleyman sets out what he calls the containment problem, the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies, as the central challenge of the period[8]. He has also given a TED talk on the future of AI[1].
Alongside his work at Microsoft, Suleyman sits on the board of The Economist[1][8]. He is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School[1][8].
Known for
- Co-founding DeepMind
- Co-founding Inflection AI and Pi
- Leading Microsoft AI and the MAI Superintelligence Team
- The Coming Wave (book, 2023)
Sources
- Mustafa Suleyman's website: biography — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Official Microsoft Blog: Mustafa Suleyman joins Microsoft to lead Copilot, March 2024 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Microsoft AI: Towards Humanist Superintelligence, November 2025 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Fortune: Microsoft joins the race for superintelligence, November 2025 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Official Microsoft Blog: Announcing Copilot leadership update, March 2026 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- GeekWire: Microsoft unveils seven homegrown AI models, June 2026 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Microsoft AI: home page and model list — checked 6 Nov 2026
- The Coming Wave: official book website — checked 6 Nov 2026