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Microsoft to open AI lab in Zurich
Nov 4, 2025
Microsoft is forming a new team in Zurich that will primarily be tasked with further developing and refining the company’s Copilot chat assistant, which is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). To get this project off the ground, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, has poached three AI specialists from Google DeepMind.
Microsoft is creating another division for research into Artificial Intelligence in Zurich: The new Microsoft AI lab will chiefly work on further developing Microsoft Copilot. Davide Bonapersona, Head of Product and Technology Development at Microsoft AI, the newly founded AI department of Microsoft in 2024, announced this news adding that: “Zurich is a magnet for top AI talent and we look forward to increasing our investment here and in Europe”.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, has poached the three AI specialists Zalán Borsos, Marco Tagliasacchi and Matthias Minderer from Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind, as founding members of the Zurich-based AI lab, which should in future grow to number several dozen experts within its ranks. Suleyman actually co-founded DeepMind, with the London-based firm having been part of Google since 2014 and responsible for driving the development of the AI chat agent Gemini.
Zalán Borsos and Marco Tagliasacchi are audio specialists. “Thrilled to share that I have joined Microsoft AI as a founding member of the new Zurich office”, Borsos writes before adding: “I will be focusing on advancing the audio capabilities alongside an outstanding team”. For his part, Tagliasacchi announced that the Zurich lab will be working together with teams based in London and the USA and that he is “looking forward to the journey ahead”. According to comments from Matthias Minderer, he will be focused on delivering vision capabilities, explaining also that he “can’t wait to get started. There’s lots to do!”.
In terms of its activities in Zurich, Microsoft has operated the Mixed Reality & AI Zurich Lab since as long ago as 2019. This is headed up by Professor Marc Pollefeys. The computer scientist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich is also Head of the Microsoft Spatial AI Lab Zurich, a research and development team for computer vision and machine learning. Its mission is to equip Microsoft Copilot with spatial perception and cogitation skills.