Microsoft is hiring a group of top AI researchers from the Allen Institute for AI and the University of Washington, including former Ai2 CEO Ali Farhadi and key researchers. The move comes as Microsoft aims to reduce its dependence on OpenAI for frontier AI models, competing against companies like Amazon, Google, and others. Farhad, Hanna Hajishirzi, and Ranjay Krishna are expected to join Mustafa Suleyman’s organization at Microsoft, while retaining their faculty positions at the UW’’S Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. The new hires are part of a broader effort to develop Microsoft’�s own foundation models. The departures represent a significant loss for Ai2, which was founded by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2014.