Microsoft stated on Monday that it is creating a new team dedicated to creating AI applications and offering resources to third-party clients.
Jay Parikh, a former global head of engineering at Meta and CEO of cybersecurity startup Lacework, will lead the new team. In a note to staff members that was also made public as a blog post, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that the team will be named Core AI Platform and Tools. According to him, the goal is to develop the complete Copilot & AI stack so that our first-party and third-party clients may create and operate AI agents and apps.
Ten months have passed since Microsoft appointed Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind, to head Copilot AI projects. Suleyman reports directly to Nadella in his capacity as executive vice president.
According to Nadella’s tweet on Monday, Parikh will collaborate closely with Suleyman, cloud head Scott Guthrie, technology chief Kevin Scott, and other senior tech executives at the organization. As an executive vice president who also reports to the CEO, Parikh joined Microsoft in October.
Since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022, artificial intelligence has emerged as the major theme in technology, with Microsoft, the company’s largest investor, at the forefront of the boom. Microsoft is the startup’s primary cloud partner and relies on OpenAI’s extensive language models for internal AI applications in domains like content creation and code creation.
Microsoft is simultaneously creating tools and products that rival some OpenAI services. In its SEC filings during the summer, Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of rivals. In a podcast that was aired this month, Nadella used the term “cooperation tension” to describe the relationship with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley.
In the end, we have to keep in mind that our internal organizational borders mean nothing to our competitors or customers, Nadella wrote in his memo on Monday.
According to Nadella, the new division would include teams from the Office of the CTO as well as those working on developer and AI platforms.
“Having the best AI platform, tools, and infrastructure will determine our success in this next phase,” he added.
Parikh came to Microsoft from Lacework, a well-known and quickly expanding firm that, seven years after its establishment, had a valuation of $8.3 billion in 2022. But when the market moved away from risk, Lacework’s fortunes changed, and the company had to drastically reduce its workforce in an attempt to generate a profit. Fortinet, a security software provider, concluded its $149 million acquisition of Lacework in August.
This report was contributed to by Jordan Novet of CNBC.
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