Overview
- Microsoft is bringing former Allen Institute for AI CEO Ali Farhadi, NLP scholar Hanna Hajishirzi, and multimodal researcher Ranjay Krishna into Mustafa Suleyman’s organization, with Sophie Lebrecht also joining from Ai2.
- Windows Central reports the company reshaped Copilot leadership to free Suleyman to focus on a Superintelligence unit that builds Microsoft’s in‑house foundation models.
- Ai2 interim CEO Peter Clark confirmed the departures and said the institute will keep driving NSF and Nvidia backed projects, including the OLMo open model effort and a $152 million, five year program for scientific AI.
- GeekWire reports the Fund for Science and Technology is moving Ai2 funding to a proposal based process that favors applied projects, a shift that has nudged model focused researchers toward industry scale resources.
- Microsoft frames the new hires as part of a plan to cut dependence on OpenAI and to deepen a bench that already includes talent from DeepMind, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.