Mustafa Suleyman

In 1984 I graduated from high school and headed off to my first year of college. That was the same year that Mustafa Suleyman was born. And by 2001, before he had even left high school, Mustafa had already started his first endeavor, the Muslim Youth Hotline. He went on to work for the Mayor of London (at the time Ken Livingstone) on human rights policy issues. And this was all before founding AI pioneer Deep Mind in 2010.

This early passion for helping others has continued to be a driving force in Mustafa's life as he has navigated from the early years of Deep Mind in London, to its acquisition by Google, and then the founding of Inflection AI (where I am currently employed as the Chief Operating Officer). Suleyman's vision for Inflection, and the personal intelligence (Pi for short) application was to build an AI which was not just "smart" in the way that OpenAI's ChatGPT succeeds in so many information tasks, but also friendly -- improving the way that humans and computers interact.

In a 2023 interview with Forbes magazine at the time of Pi's launch, Suleyman said of the project:

“It’s really a new class of AI — it’s distinct in the sense that a personal AI is one that really works for you as the individual. Eventually, Pi will help you organize your schedule, prep for meetings and learn new skills."

This year Suleyman, and Inflection, both started a new chapter in this journey. In March Suleyman joined Microsoft as the CEO of Microsoft AI, a new division bringing together Microsoft’s major consumer AI products and teams including Copilot, Bing and Edge. Core members of the Inflection team have joined Mustafa, and Microsoft entered into a non-exclusive license for the Inflection technology. In a real sense the future of Microsoft's consumer AI is powered by Pi.

At the same time we have formed an entirely new team at Inflection, what Reid Hoffman has called a "re-founding." We are focused on using the same technology to improve the way businesses adopt and use AI. Inflection continues to own, develop, and license the technology as Microsoft has a non-exclusive license to use it in their products. So both companies will be going forward independently to develop the next generation of this breakthrough way for humans and computers to work together (Microsoft does not hold any ownership stake in Inflection).

True to Mustafa's early commitment to social issues and human rights, Inflection continues to be committed to our mission as a Public Benefit Corporation. Our mission will balance the interests of stakeholders, the people affected by the corporation, and our overall public benefit goals. One area of commitment is in our belief that we will all be best served by AI technologies that we have control over. We are one of seven leading AI companies that have worked with the White House – Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI – to help move toward safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology. And building on the Bletchley agreements, we are one of 16 companies that have worked with the UK and Republic of Korea to agree to a set of safety outcomes, also known as The Seoul Accord.

We think that this control and commitment to safe, secure, and transparent development should extend also to the businesses that adopt these technologies and we are committed to helping our customers own their own intelligence as AI becomes an increasingly important part of how every company organizes and runs every aspect of their business operations.