Microsoft forms superintelligence team to rival Meta’s, stresses ‘humanist’ focus

• Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman announced the MAI Superintelligence Team on Thursday.
• “We reject narratives about a race to AGI,” Suleyman wrote, instead seeing it as a “deeply human endeavour.”
• Meta launched its own superintelligence lab earlier this year, led by Scale AI cofounder Alexandr Wang.

Four months after Meta announced its superintelligence lab, Microsoft is starting its own team.

Microsoft announced the MAI Superintelligence Team on Thursday, which will be led by Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. Suleyman wrote in a blog post that the team aims to be the “world’s best place to research and build AI, bar none.”

“I think about it as humanist superintelligence to clearly indicate this isn’t about some directionless technological goal,” Suleyman wrote. “We are doing this to solve real concrete problems and do it in such a way that it remains grounded and controllable.”

“We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity,” he added.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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 AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a memo at the lab’s launch. “I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.”

In October, Meta laid off 600 employees from its superintelligence division.

Microsoft also appears to be trying to set itself apart from other AI rivals by emphasizing what it says will be its careful approach to pursuing superintelligence.

“In doing this we reject narratives about a race to AGI, and instead see it as part of a wider and deeply human endeavour to improve our lives and future prospects,” Suleyman wrote in his blog post.

“We feel a deep responsibility to get this right.”

Anthropic has taken a somewhat similar humanist approach, stating it wants to ensure “sophisticated AI systems remain beneficial to humanity.” As for superintelligence, CEO Dario Amodei said it could arrive as soon as 2026.

OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is also involved in the superintelligence game. In 2024, Sutskever started his own research lab, Safe Superintelligence Inc., after leaving OpenAI.

Microsoft recently signed a new agreement with OpenAI, which it has invested billions in, that gives Microsoft a roughly 27% stake in OpenAI’s newly structured for-profit public benefit corporation.

As the two AI shops have become increasingly competitive even while partnered, Suleyman described it like “siblings” with a good relationship who sometimes “squabble.”

Do you work on a superintelligence team? Reach out to the reporter from a non-work device at hchandonnet@insider.com or at henrychand.30 on Signal.