Microsoft AI Launches New London Hub Led by Former Inflection and DeepMind Scientist Jordan Hoffmann

Microsoft has unveiled a new hub in London dedicated to its recently launched consumer AI division, led by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer who joined Microsoft from the renowned startup Inflection AI, which the tech giant invested in last year.

This announcement comes just three weeks after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced the consumer AI division, which is also spearheaded by the founders of Inflection AI, including Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind—a prominent AI company acquired by Google in 2014.

During the initial announcement, Nadella indicated that “several members of the Inflection team” have joined Microsoft’s new AI unit, with a Bloomberg report suggesting that most of the team indeed made the transition. Hoffmann, a former PhD student and research scientist at DeepMind since 2020, was among those who moved to Microsoft after Suleyman founded Inflection AI in 2022, actively recruiting talent from DeepMind and Meta.

In a recent blog post, Suleyman praised Hoffmann as an “exceptional AI scientist and engineer.” With Suleyman now reporting directly to Nadella in the U.S., Hoffmann will oversee operations at the new London hub. Suleyman mentioned that they plan to post new job openings in the “coming weeks and months” to attract AI experts to join Hoffmann at Microsoft's Paddington office, where the team will focus on developing new language models and related infrastructure.

This initiative aligns with another significant announcement made in partnership with the U.K. government, where Microsoft pledged to invest £2.5 billion ($3.15 billion) in the U.K. over the next three years. This investment will include expanding its data center presence and training over one million individuals for careers in the AI sector.

The U.K. ranks among the top countries globally for AI research and development investment, following the U.S. and China. With Google’s DeepMind also headquartered in London, we may soon witness a fierce competition for top talent as these two leaders vie for supremacy in the AI landscape.

In related news, Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, recently received a knighthood for his “services to artificial intelligence.” Microsoft has been approached for comments on the scale of its U.K. AI hub but has declined to provide further details at this time.