Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is pushing back on Silicon Valley’s escalating AI pay war, according to a recent Business Insider report. While rivals chase superstar researchers with nine-figure packages, Microsoft is taking a different path.
What stood out
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Selective teams over superstar hires
Suleyman rejected Meta’s approach of hiring individuals at extreme cost, arguing that productivity comes from cohesive teams and culture, not isolated brilliance. -
AI is already superhuman
His claim reframes the debate. The risk is no longer future capability but how organisations absorb power they already have. -
Respect without imitation
He praised Sam Altman’s speed in building data centres and Elon Musk’s execution force, while still choosing a fundamentally different strategy. -
Scale beats spectacle
Microsoft’s $17.5B India investment and Accenture training 30,000 staff on Claude signal where real advantage is being built, infrastructure, skills, and adoption.
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If AI capability is already superhuman, then leadership, workflow design, and team systems are now the bottleneck. Paying more does not fix that. Designing better organisations does.
