LONDON — DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman surprised many of his followers last week when he announced he's leaving his vice president role at Google to become a venture capitalist at Silicon Valley firm Greylock Partners, which has backed the likes of Facebook, Airbnb and LinkedIn since it was founded in 1965.
His exit from Google, which acquired the DeepMind artificial intelligence lab in 2014, comes after he was accused of having an aggressive management style by former colleagues at DeepMind.
Explaining the rationale behind the move, Suleyman told LinkedIn billionaire and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman on a podcast last week that he wants to be around founders who are visionary and fearless.
"I'm definitely somebody who likes to take risks," Suleyman said on the podcast, which was released last Thursday. "I find it super energizing when I'm around people who also have a courageous vision of the future, which sounds wacky or implausible, but are prepared to dedicate their lives to giving it a shot."
He added: "They're the kinds of people that I like to back and I think that's what we need. We need more people who are prepared to try and do bold things and tackle hard problems to try to improve our world."
Suleyman, widely known as "Moose," declined to talk to CNBC. However, in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch about his new role, he said that he thinks AI has a central role to play in gaming and the so-called metaverse.
One former DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the discussion, said they were surprised to read that Suleyman's main interests seem to be around the metaverse and gaming.
"In the past, Mustafa had a truly admirable focus on genuinely trying to make the world a better place," they said. "In particular, whilst at DeepMind, he played an essential role in health care and climate change projects. So I'm surprised that Suleyman's main interests now seem to be around the metaverse and gaming. I hope he will also find time to focus on fixing some of the deep problems facing the world."
Other tech investors said they think Suleyman, who has already made a number of personal investments, will make a good VC.
"I think Mustafa is likely to be a great investor given his track record in collaborating with exceptional founders and his early conviction as an investor in [start-up builder] Entrepreneur First," Ian Hogarth, an angel investor and the co-founder of concert discovery app Songkick, told CNBC.
Two of Suleyman's other public investments include music ticketing app Dice and health-care app Babylon Health.
Tom Hulme, a venture capital partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), told CNBC that Suleyman has been excited about the VC industry for a while.
But another VC, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the discussion, questioned how long Suleyman would remain a VC for. "My gut says that it's temporary while he looks for the next company to build or join as a founder," they told CNBC. "I think he has more left in the tank."
