Then, earlier this year, Inflection cut a deal with Microsoft to license its core technology in a weird and kind of controversial not-quite-acquisition situation, one that sent Mustafa, his cofounder, and a majority of their employees into Microsoft.

In April, Suleyman amped up his talent war with the London-based Google DeepMind when he opened a new Microsoft AI hub in the city. He appointed Jordan Hoffman, an A.I. researcher who formerly worked at both Inflection AI and Google DeepMind, to run the London office.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman disagrees with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s recent claim in a Reddit AMA that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is possible on today’s hardware. While AGI is “plausible,” he tells The Verge ’s Nilay Patel in the latest Decoder episode that it could take as long as 10 years to achieve.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman talks about AGI, security, OpenAI partnership, copyright infringement by AI, and more in a detailed interview with The Verge.