Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman hires ex-DeepMind staff for AI health unit

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Microsoft’s artificial intelligence head Mustafa Suleyman is building a new team focused on consumer health by hiring staff from a similar unit he once led at Google DeepMind, as the rival companies race to create lucrative applications from the cutting-edge technology.

Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in 2010, has hired Dominic King, the former head of DeepMind’s health unit and a UK-trained surgeon, as vice-president of Microsoft AI’s new London-based health team.

He has also poached Christopher Kelly, a clinical research scientist at DeepMind and a neonatal intensive care doctor at Evelina Children’s Hospital in London, as well as two others from his time at the AI start-up.

Microsoft’s new consumer AI health division comes as tech groups rush to turn generative AI into a staple of everyday life, in a bid to drive revenues from the fast-developing technology. Sir Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chief executive of DeepMind, is also focused on healthcare, such as leading spin-off AI group Isomorphic Labs, which is working on drug discovery.

Health has become one of the growth areas in the AI boom. Consumers have often turned to the web for health-related queries, and a Deloitte survey this year found that 48 per cent of respondents asked generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude health-focused questions.

These include questions about specific health conditions, symptoms and mental health. Microsoft AI’s health unit will focus on these types of consumer health applications using generative AI.

The US tech group, which hired Suleyman earlier this year, confirmed the creation of its new unit. “In our mission to inform, support and empower everyone with responsible AI, health is a critical use case,” said Microsoft. “We continue to hire top talent in support of these efforts.”

Google DeepMind’s health operation, founded by Suleyman, started in 2016 and grew to a team of more than 100 people based in London. The unit had signed a five-year partnership with 10 UK NHS hospitals to process the medical data of 1.6mn patients, and launched an app to monitor patients’ vital signs.

However, DeepMind was later embroiled in controversy over its work for the UK health sector amid concerns about the security of patient data. This led to Suleyman’s unit being spun off in 2019 by parent company Alphabet into a Google unit in California headed by David Feinberg, the former chief executive of Geisinger, one of the US’s largest private health groups.

Suleyman left DeepMind that same year, taking up a new policy role at Google’s California headquarters before leaving in 2022 to do a stint as a venture investor. He later created AI start-up Inflection.

In March, Microsoft hired Suleyman from Inflection as well as most of its staff, including Karén Simonyan, co-founder and chief scientist of Inflection, and a former DeepMind researcher himself.

Other recent hires for Microsoft’s AI health unit include Peter Hames, the former chief executive of UK digital health start-up Big Health and Bay Gross, co-founder of digital healthcare provider Cityblock Health.

As part of his broader team, Suleyman has also employed former DeepMind colleagues Nando de Freitas and Trevor Back, who led the start-up’s health research team. However, both de Freitas and Back will not work specifically on Microsoft’s health applications.