Mustafa Suleyman founded DeepMind in 2010 alongside current Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis. Four years later, Google bought DeepMind for 400 million pounds (currently $486 million), an ambitious bet on the potential of AI that set off an expensive race in Silicon Valley for specialists in the field. DeepMind soon began working on health-care research, eventually creating a division dedicated to the area. Suleyman, led the development of the DeepMind Health team, building it into a 100-person unit.
Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder, DeepMind, is currently on extended leave from the company, with various speculation that parent company Google had taken over the bulk of his responsibilities. Seems Suleyman’s leave, which DeepMind says was a mutual decision between him and Alphabet, comes months after DeepMind Health, the unit of the company that was headed up by Suleyman, was transferred to a new Google Health division in California.
A DeepMind spokesperson said: “Mustafa’s taking some time out right now after ten hectic years,” adding that the company expected him to return at the end of the year. The move does not come as a surprise to those who have worked closely with Suleyman and his team at DeepMind.
Post spin-off was reported last November, Suleyman said, he would no longer oversee the day-to-day operations of the health team, but that he would sit on Google Health’s strategy board and offer advice. Since his main focus was health applications, which was carved out by Google, there wasn’t much left for him to manage.
On record, DeepMind was heavily criticized for its work in the U.K. health sector. DeepMind Health’s first product was a mobile app called Streams that was originally designed to help doctors identify patients at risk of developing acute kidney injury.
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