Four months after Meta announced its Superintelligence Institute, Microsoft is launching its own team.
Microsoft on Thursday announced the MAI Superintelligence Team, led by Mustafa Suleiman, CEO of Microsoft AI. In a blog post, Suleiman wrote that the team aims to be “the best place in the world to research and build AI, without exception.”
“I see this as a humanistic superintelligence to make it clear that it is not about directionless technological goals,” Suleiman wrote. “We’re doing this to really solve concrete problems, and we’re doing it in a way that keeps it grounded and controllable.”
“We’re not building some vaguely defined, otherworldly superintelligence. We’re building a working technology clearly designed for the sole purpose of serving humanity,” he added.
Microsoft did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Microsoft’s announcement comes just four months after the launch of Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, led by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang.
“As the pace of advances in AI accelerates, the development of superintelligence is on the horizon,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a memo at the institute’s launch. “I believe this is the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.”
In October, Mehta laid off 600 employees in its superintelligence division.
Microsoft also appears to be trying to differentiate itself from other AI rivals by emphasizing a measured approach to pursuing superintelligence.
“In doing this, we reject the narrative about the race to AGI and instead see it as part of a broader and deeper human effort to improve our lives and future prospects,” Suleiman wrote in a blog post.
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“We feel a deep responsibility to get this right.”
Anthropic says it takes a similar humanistic approach and wants to ensure that “sophisticated AI systems continue to be beneficial to humanity.” As for superintelligence, CEO Dario Amodei said it could be realized as early as 2026.
Ilya Satskeva, co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, is also involved in the superintelligence game. In 2024, Sutskever left OpenAI and founded his own research organization, Safe Superintelligence Inc.
Microsoft recently signed a new agreement with OpenAI, in which it has invested billions of dollars, giving Microsoft an approximately 27% stake in OpenAI’s newly formed for-profit public benefit corporation.
Although the two AI shops are affiliated, the competition is fierce, and Suleiman described the two shops as like “brothers” on good terms who sometimes “argue”.
Do you work for a super intelligence team? Contact the reporter from a non-work device at hchandonnet@insider.com or henrychand.30 on Signal.
