Source: Quantum Bits

Major changes in Microsoft's senior management.

Everything was triggered by Nadella's appointment of a new AI director.

No, last week DeepMind co-created Suleiman just became the CEO of Microsoft's new AI division —

This week, the person in charge of Bing was suddenly announced: stepping down.

The executive has worked at Microsoft for over 11 years.

Today, his whereabouts are unknown. Whether he left his old owner's house completely or transferred from within the company is unknown.

The reshuffle of Microsoft's senior management has begun.

DeepMind co-created airborne, the person in charge of Bing was fired

Last week, Suleyman (Suleyman), co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, airlanded on Microsoft:

Sitting directly as the CEO of the new division “Microsoft AI,” he is alone in the research and development of the three main AI products for consumers: Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

This is Microsoft's biggest architectural change in this recent generative wave.

Suleiman dropped out of Oxford University and founded DeepMind with two friends (Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg) in 2010, then acquired by Google in 2014.

In 2019, Suleiman completely quit DeepMind and began working with Jeff Dean to take charge of Google AI related work.

In 2022, he left Google to start a new company, Inflection AI, which is currently valued at $4 billion.

This time, after being hired by Microsoft, in addition to being the executive vice president and CEO of an important new division, he also joined the senior leadership team to report directly to CEO Nadella.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Parakhin, the former head of Bing and head of Microsoft's advertising business, turned to Suleiman to report.

As a result, thousands of employees under Parakhin also followed suit and became Suleiman's team.

Then everyone saw what happened:

After just a week, Parakhin decided to step down.

The official statement is “looking for a new job”. Whether it is an internal transfer or leaving Microsoft is unknown, but there are opinions and analysis that the latter is very likely.

In addition to Bing and the advertising business, Parakhin is also responsible for Microsoft's Windows software business.

Now, this part is classified as the former head of the Surface department — the same as Microsoft Windows and Surface, which were originally responsible for two different executives, but now it's under one person.

According to Bloomberg, this change in the department shows that Nadella has lost patience with the Bing team.

Because Microsoft has invested a lot of money in transforming the Bing search engine, it has hardly had any impact on the competitive landscape with Google.

Microsoft goes away from OpenAI

All of these shuffling and changes at Microsoft's senior management must start with “de-OpenAI.”

First, although the partnership with OpenAI made Microsoft “like a sea of water,” the “coup” triggered by Ultraman's exit from the board of directors in November last year made the Microsoft board start to worry:

OpenAI isn't stable.

As a result, the board of directors recommended that Nadella diversify the company's AI investments, that is, not just hang on OpenAI.

Second, within Microsoft, employee complaints about “the company being reduced to an IT department of OpenAI” are also intensifying.

In everyone's opinion, the company cares too much about cooperation with OpenAI and consumes too many resources on this “one person.”

One of the Cloud+AI teams said that in the past, they were an innovation engine for Microsoft, but now they are only working to maintain OpenAI services.

Azure AI-related departments have also directly caused the departure of some executives because they have begun to focus on Azure OpenAI.

Finally, in addition to dealing with regulation (organizations such as the US and the European Union have begun monopoly investigations into the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI), and the current progress in challenging Google's search position is very slow, Microsoft has had to take new steps.

And then:

(1) Set up a new AI division, Microsoft AI, which is responsible for the development of all AI products for C-end consumers, including the current three main forces of Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

(2) Introduce experienced DeepMind Co-Founder Suleiman as the general manager.

He also brought in a huge wave of people from his new company, Inflection AI.

Among them is Inflection AI co-founder Karén Simonyan, who will hold another key position in Microsoft AI: chief scientist.

(ps. (Inflection AI is also one of OpenAI's many competitors, and Microsoft has invested in it before)

This move also marks the official launch of Microsoft's “de-OpenAI” calculation.

(Of course, Microsoft's ultimate goal should be to achieve a balance with OpenAI.)

One More Thing

Nadella, he's in a hurry.

Just last night, Stable Diffusion owner Emad, who had just announced his resignation, posted a video link with him.

After reading it, some netizens quipped:

No matter what AI founder he is, the first thing he has to face when he is fired by the board of directors is this face.

By implication, now, Nadella has to meet anyone worth digging for.

Cough cough. Fortunately, Emad is just scaring everyone; he probably won't join Microsoft so soon. (manual dog head)

edit/lambor