Mikhail Parakhin, who stepped down from his role just days after Suleyman became CEO of Microsoft AI, commented under an X post about the DeepMind cofounder.
An X user wrote “We need you ngl” (short for “not gonna lie”) under a post summarizing Suleyman’s TED Talk last week, which some critics have been ripping into.
Parakhin responded in a comment that looked like a low-key dig at Suleyman: “Hard to disagree :-).”
Some venture capitalists have been taking aim on X at Suleyman’s AI remarks in his TED Talk.
Martin Casado, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz’s firm a16z, said: “Good god. Make it stop. Total fucking nonsense.”
John Chu, a VC firm Khosla Ventures partner, wrote: “This is what happens when you hire the business cofounder who doesn’t really understand the tech.”
Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington also chimed in: “When you give a midwit a platform.”
Microsoft executive vice-president Rajesh Jha announced in an internal memo last month obtained by The Verge that Parakhin had “decided to explore new roles.”
Parakhin would have reported to Suleyman after Satya Nadella’s reshuffle in which he was tapped to lead its consumer AI products and research including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.
Parakhin, who led the company’s Bing search engine and advertising businesses, will now report to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott instead.
Suleyman’s first big move at Microsoft was announcing an AI hub in London. He cofounded Inflection AI firm in 2022 alongside Karén Simonyan and “Paypal mafia” member Reid Hoffman. Before that he cofounded DeepMind in 2010, which was acquired by Google in 2014.
Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
