- Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman hired former employees of Google Deepmind. Marco Tagliasacchi and Zalán Borsos are two highly sought after scientists who spearheaded an AI podcasting tool. Additionally, Suleyman brought on Matthias Minderer, a research scientist with a PhD from Harvard University who worked at Google Brain and later Google DeepMind.
As the race for artificial intelligence advancement plows ahead, Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman is plundering tech companies for their talent.
This week Suleyman announced that he lured three former Googlers to join Microsoft’s new Zurich office, two of whom built “Audio Overviews.” The British tech founder left Google in 2022 to start Inflection AI before his March 2024 debut on the senior leadership team at Microsoft, reporting up to CEO Satya Nadella.
Two of the scientists, Marco Tagliasacchi and Zalán Borsos, overlapped with Suleyman at Google. Tagliasacchi and Borsos are credited with constructing “Audio Overviews” for DeepMind, which developed an artificial intelligence feature that can turn text into a natural-flowing podcast. The feature was part of Google’s AI research tool, NotebookLM.
Additionally, the duo worked on Astra, DeepMind’s foray into smarter machine learning known as AI Agents, which can use video, audio, and text to answer questions in real time. Agents can autonomously perform tasks on the user’s behalf.
“AI continues to be a transformative force, with audio playing a critical role in shaping more natural, intuitive, and immersive interaction,” Tagliasacchi wrote on LinkedIn.
Along with Tagliasacchi and Borsos, Suleyman hired Matthias Minderer, an ex-DeepMind research scientist. In a LinkedIn post, Minderer said he will work on vision capabilities, meaning his work will contribute toward the capabilities for machine learning to understand images and video.
The Financial Times reported that someone close to the hires said the researchers were a critical piece in reaching Suleyman’s goal of integrating AI agents into Microsoft’s Copilot.
“It’s a stellar team and will be an important hub for MAI alongside our London office, which is growing fast too!” Suleyman said in a LinkedIn post.
This isn’t the first time Suleyman has reeled in Google DeepMind employees. In December 2024, he hired Dominic King, former head of DeepMind’s health sector, and clinical research scientist Christopher Kelly, for Microsoft’s consumer AI health division.
Google and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.