Microsoft is hiring several leading AI researchers from the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the University of Washington. The group includes former Ai2 CEO Ali Farhadi, language model researcher Hanna Hajishirzi, and multimodal expert Ranjay Krishna. All three will retain their university positions. They are joining Mustafa Suleyman's Superintelligence team at Microsoft AI. The move is part of Microsoft's effort to reduce its dependence on OpenAI for AI models.

For Ai2, founded in 2014 by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the departures represent a major loss. Hajishirzi leads the open-source language model OLMo and a $152 million project with Nvidia and the NSF. The exits are also tied to a shift in funding: Ai2 was originally funded by Allen's Vulcan Inc. and later his estate. Its primary backer is now the Fund for Science and Technology (FFST), a $3.1 billion foundation created under Allen's instructions.

FFST, led by CEO Dr. Lynda Stuart, favors applied AI over costly frontier model research and is moving from annual funding to a proposal-based process, Geekwire reports. Future support is expected to prioritize real-world AI applications over open-source foundation models, which helps explain why researchers focused on model development are leaving.