Reid Hoffman steps down from the Microsoft board to enter 'founder mode' with the AI drug company Manus.

Reid Hoffman steps down from the Microsoft board to enter 'founder mode' with the AI drug company Manus.

      Reid Hoffman is resigning from Microsoft’s board after nearly ten years to concentrate on Manus, his AI drug discovery startup, which has secured over $50 million in funding. The departure was announced in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Hoffman expressed his desire to return to "founder mode" with his company.

      He joined the board in 2016, following Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. During his tenure, Hoffman played a role in significant AI investments, including Microsoft's initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI in 2019, a move that significantly influenced the company's direction.

      Hoffman was also one of the initial investors in OpenAI and served on its board until 2023, when he stepped down due to potential conflicts of interest. These conflicts increased further when Microsoft completed a $650 million acqui-hire deal with Inflection AI, a startup co-founded by Hoffman.

      This acquisition brought Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to Microsoft, leading a focused division on superintelligence, and raised regulatory concerns about conflicts within Big Tech boards.

      Hoffman is transitioning to focus on Manus, a drug discovery firm he co-founded, which has raised more than $50 million in two seed funding rounds, with support from General Catalyst. The company's CEO is Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

      While Hoffman holds the roles of co-founder and chairman, he indicated in a recent episode of his "Possible" podcast that he intends to take a more active role. He remarked, “One of the things I realized over the last month was that we’re seeing such progress with Manus. I need to get back to founder mode,” during a conversation with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

      Hoffman mentioned that Manus is advancing in what he describes as “Move 37” AI, a concept referring to AI that transcends human creativity, inspired by AlphaGo's notable move against Lee Sedol. He believes this idea is relevant to chemistry, especially in the quest to find new compounds to fight cancer.

      His departure coincides with a surge in AI drug discovery across the industry, exemplified by ByteDance’s Anew Labs revealing its first AI-designed therapy and Google DeepMind's Isomorphic Labs entering clinical trials with AI-designed drug candidates.

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Reid Hoffman steps down from the Microsoft board to enter 'founder mode' with the AI drug company Manus.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, is resigning from Microsoft's board after almost ten years in order to concentrate on Manus, his AI-driven drug discovery startup.