Microsoft's vice president of AI, Luis Vargas, has quit the technology giant.

Vargas said that he will now be the founder and CTO of a new AI startup, details of which have yet to be revealed.

Microsoft Cloud
– Sebastian Moss

"I feel extremely fortunate to have worked with exceptional people on many exciting things, from introducing HA/DR in SQL Server to supporting mission-critical workloads in Azure," Vargas said on LinkedIn.

"The thing that I will remember the most was working on the company's large-scale AI strategy from its very beginning with Kevin Scott (Microsoft CTO), coordinating efforts across infrastructure, systems, platform, models, and products. We trained and customized foundation models that we leveraged across the product portfolio, setting the basis for the partnership with OpenAI, and leading the GenAI wave."

Vargas worked at Microsoft for 16 years, most recently reporting to CTO Scott.

Microsoft, along with other large tech companies, have faced a brain drain as prominent AI researchers and executives leave for generative AI companies like OpenAI, or to start their own businesses.

Last month, Microsoft's VP of generative AI, Sebastien Bubeck, left for OpenAI, which itself has seen a large number of staffers leave to form their own ventures.

At the same time, tech giants have increased hiring efforts to bring talent to their divisions amid an AI arms race. Microsoft hired most of Inflection AI in March and put its CEO and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman in charge of consumer AI.