Mustafa Suleyman and Sam Altman (PHOTO:X)
Mustafa Suleyman has in the headlines for the last few days, thanks to his comments on OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
Microsoft’s AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, has shared that he’s always in touch with other big names in the industry, people like Sam Altman from OpenAI, Dario Amodei from Anthropic, and Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind.
Mustafa Suleyman doesn’t hold back when talking about Sam Altman. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Suleyman called Altman “courageous” and made it clear he’s impressed.
“He might actually end up as one of the great entrepreneurs of our generation. He’s already done a lot. Right now, he’s building data centres faster than anyone else out there. If he manages to pull this off, it’s going to be huge,” Suleyman said.
Then there’s Elon Musk. Even though Musk helped start OpenAI, he’s since split from Altman and now runs his own AI startup, xAI. Suleyman describes Musk as a “bulldozer.”
In his words, “He’s got almost superhuman abilities to shape reality the way he wants. His track record is wild, and he usually finds a way to make the impossible happen. I kind of like that he just says what he thinks. He’s totally unfiltered.”
Suleyman says his goal is to make Microsoft fully self-sufficient when it comes to developing its own cutting-edge AI models and to build a world-class superintelligence team to make it happen.
“We’re really pushing for the frontier here,” he says. “We want to create the best superintelligence out there, and make sure it’s also the safest.”
Just last month, Suleyman talked about his team’s focus on building a “humanist superintelligence.” With how expensive it is to keep up in the AI race, Suleyman admits on the podcast that it’s tough to know if startups can really compete with the giants.
“It’s the uncertainty that’s making valuations so wild right now,” he says. “If we suddenly hit an intelligence explosion, a bunch of people might arrive at the same place all at once.”
He grew up in Islington, London. His dad drove a taxi and came from Syria; his mom was an English nurse. Mustafa Suleyman grew up near Caledonia Road in London.
His dad drove a cab, his mom worked as a nurse, and they raised three sons with one main belief: education opens doors. Mustafa went to Thornhill Primary, then Queen Elizabeth’s School in Barnet.
Then came Oxford. Mustafa landed a spot at Mansfield College to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. But sitting in class started to feel empty. At 19, he made a call that surprised everyone: he dropped out.
After that, he jumped into public policy, working as a human rights officer for London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone. Then he helped launch Reos Partners, a consultancy that advised governments and organizations on social change. Those years taught him how policies actually get made, how systems break down, and what it takes to get different groups talking to each other to fix real problems.
By 2010, tech and AI were starting to take off. Mustafa, Demis Hassabis, and Shane Legg co-founded DeepMind, a company with a simple but bold mission: build intelligent systems that could learn by themselves. DeepMind quickly made waves for pushing the limits of machine learning.
Google bought DeepMind in 2014, and Mustafa took on the tough job of turning cutting-edge AI into practical products. He led work with the NHS on clinician-led tools and found ways to cut energy use at Google’s data centres. Suddenly, he was right at the intersection of groundbreaking technology and real-world impact.
He left Google in 2022 and co-founded Inflexion AI with Reid Hoffman. This time, the goal was to build technology that feels genuinely empathetic, helpful, and not overwhelming.
Their chatbot, Pi, focused on being supportive, not just productive. It was another move that showed Mustafa’s drive to make technology fit people’s lives, not the other way around.
Then, in 2024, Microsoft hired him as Chief Product Officer for Microsoft AI, putting him in charge of how AI gets built into everyday tools, from Office to digital assistants. He brought over key engineers from Inflection, underlining just how big a job he’d taken on.
Now, Suleyman runs Microsoft’s AI division and reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
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