Microsoft is charting a new course for its artificial intelligence ambitions, forming a new AI superintelligence team led by Mustafa Suleyman — the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI. The new initiative, revealed in a company blog post and interview with The Wall Street Journal, signals Microsoft’s growing intent to reduce its dependence on OpenAI while pursuing what it calls “superintelligence” — AI systems that could exceed human performance.
Suleyman said the team, called MAI Superintelligence, will focus on building powerful models “aligned to human values by default.” He added, “AI is going to become more humanlike, but it won’t have the property of experiencing suffering or pain itself, and therefore we shouldn’t over-empathize with it.” Microsoft’s approach, he said, is to ensure that AI systems “are not designed to exceed and escape human control.”
While Microsoft praised its longtime partner OpenAI, Suleyman noted that the company’s new strategy prioritizes self-sufficiency. Microsoft’s Copilot platform — which powers everything from its 365 productivity suite to the consumer Copilot chatbot — still runs largely on OpenAI’s models, including GPT-5. The tech giant currently holds a massive 27% stake in OpenAI’s new public-benefit corporation, valued at about $135 billion USD ($190.6 billion CAD).
Despite their close relationship, the two companies are increasingly becoming competitors. OpenAI has been developing its own data centers, partnering with Microsoft rivals such as Amazon and Oracle, and expanding its enterprise business — which now accounts for roughly 40% of its revenue. Earlier this year, reports suggested that Microsoft and OpenAI executives were engaged in tense talks over the future of their partnership.
Under Suleyman’s leadership, Microsoft’s new superintelligence effort will emphasize safety, testing, and “containment” — ensuring AI systems only communicate in human-understandable ways and never present themselves as conscious entities. He said Microsoft’s goal is to develop systems that exceed human performance, not human control.
Healthcare will be one of the first industries touched by Microsoft’s next-generation AI. Suleyman said the company’s diagnostic tools have already outperformed groups of doctors in early tests, calling the technology “very close” to being market-ready.
The formation of Microsoft’s superintelligence team marks one of the company’s boldest moves yet to define its own AI future — one that’s increasingly OpenAI-free.
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