Behind the Marriage of Microsoft and Mustafa Suleyman, a Bid for Redemption

On March 19, the 70-person staff of Inflection, an artificial intelligence startup that had raised $1.5 billion in less than two years, was summoned to a Hyatt hotel auditorium near the company’s Palo Alto, Calif., offices. Moments before, they’d received some shocking news: Microsoft would pay $650 million to license Inflection’s AI models and hire two of its three co-founders, Chief Scientist Karén Simonyan and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who was leaving to lead Microsoft’s consumer AI efforts.

Seated in …

artificial artificial intelligence billion inflection intelligence marriage microsoft moments mustafa mustafa suleyman near offices person redemption staff startup suleyman the company