Microsoft (MS) is intensifying the competition for AI talent by recruiting three researchers from Google DeepMind.
On the 4th, according to the Financial Times (FT), Mustafa Suleyman, vice president leading the AI institutional sector at MS, hired DeepMind researchers Marco Tagliassaci, Zallan Borsos, and Matthias Minderer. Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind, stayed with the company until 2022 after its acquisition by Google.
Tagliassaci and Borsos participated in the development of Google's AI research tool NotebookLM's "audio overview" and were involved in the AI agent "ASTRA" project. ASTRA is an AI that answers questions related to video, audio, and text in real-time. Minderer is expected to be responsible for developing the image analysis capabilities of the AI model.
The three will work at the newly established MS AI Research Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and are expected to play a key role in developing the next-generation version of MS's AI model Copilot. MS is currently focusing on the development of conversational AI agents and plans to include features like flight booking and schedule management.
The competition for AI talent is fierce globally. Google signed a technology licensing agreement worth $2.7 billion (approximately 3.9 trillion won) with the startup Character.AI to rehire a "genius" employee who left in September of last year.
Big tech corporations like China's Alibaba are actively recruiting AI talent from Silicon Valley in the United States by offering high salaries. Suleyman expressed optimism regarding this recruitment, saying, "A talented team has joined, and it will become an important hub for MS's AI business."