Microsoft has hired more than 20 employees from Google's DeepMind division, including former head of engineering for Gemini chatbot Amar Subramanian. He has become Microsoft's vice president of AI, saying the new team has "ambition without ego," the Financial Times reported.
The company also has engineering lead Sonal Gupta, programmer Adam Sadowski, and manager Tim Frank joining. In total, Microsoft has lured at least 24 DeepMind specialists over the past six months.
The talent competition between Microsoft and Google has intensified after DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleiman took over as head of Microsoft's consumer AI strategy, having previously brought two key people with him to create a new medical technology division.
Microsoft also hired most of the team from Inflection, a startup founded by Suleiman, for $650 million to license the technology. Meanwhile, DeepMind is struggling to stay competitive. According to internal Google documents, ChatGPT is ahead of Gemini in terms of monthly users: 600 million to 400 million.
Google said that DeepMind's staff turnover is lower than the industry average, and the company is also actively hiring specialists from other labs, including Microsoft.
Recall that the fight for staff between Meta and OpenAI is also ongoing. Mark Zuckerberg is offering developers compensation packages of up to $300 million over four years, of which more than $100 million is paid in the first year. The company also continues to lure Apple employees to work on superintelligence.