March 19 (Reuters) - Microsoft ( MSFT ) has appointed

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a newly

created consumer AI unit and hired several employees of his

Inflection AI startup, seeking to defend its lead against rising

competition from Google.

Suleyman will be CEO of the unit, Microsoft AI, the company

said on Tuesday, bringing under one roof its consumer AI efforts

such as its Copilot chatbot and the new Bing browser that uses

the technology.

The Copilot, built using technology from ChatGPT-maker

OpenAI, is the lynchpin of Microsoft's ( MSFT ) efforts to generate

revenue from its AI efforts and can write emails, summarize

documents and make presentations.

"This infusion of new talent will enable us to accelerate

our pace yet again," Microsoft ( MSFT ) CEO Satya Nadella said in a blog

post.

"As part of this transition, Mikhail Parakhin and his entire

team, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge; and Misha Bilenko and

the GenAI team will move to report to Mustafa," he said.

It comes when Microsoft ( MSFT ) has been partnering with other

startups including France's Mistral AI against the backdrop of

heightened regulatory scrutiny of its tie-up with OpenAI.

Nadella said on Tuesday that Microsoft ( MSFT ) is "very committed"

to its OpenAI partnership.

Karen Simonyan, who co-founded Inflection AI along with

Suleyman and Microsoft ( MSFT ) board member Reid Hoffman, will join as

chief scientist.

Meanwhile, Alphabet's Google unit is expanding its

AI-related efforts. Bloomberg News reported on Monday that Apple

was in talks to build Google's Gemini artificial intelligence

engine into the iPhone.

Inflection AI has emerged as one of the most high-flying

names in the genAI race after raising $1.3 billion from

Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Nvidia ( NVDA ) in a mix of cash and cloud credit

at a valuation of $4 billion last June.

The startup behind the chatbot Pi said on Tuesday Sean

White, former head of research and development at Mozilla, will

be its new CEO and that it plans pivot to serving models to

commercial customers, instead of focusing on consumers.

It also added that its Inflection-2.5 will be available on

Microsoft Azure.

(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh

Kuber and Sriraj Kalluvila)