Microsoft's Science President Peter Lee Heads to Mercedes F1

Peter Lee, who just announced his departure as president of Microsoft Science, plans to join the Mercedes Formula 1 team as an AI advisor on a one-year contract with an option for a second year, he told Fortune.

His exact title is still under discussion. The deal structure, though, is set: one year, plus an option. Lee spent 16 years at Microsoft shaping its science and research efforts, exploring how AI can help doctors and scientists crack hard problems in the physical, biological, and medical sciences.

At Mercedes, Lee said he'll focus on four goals:

• Using AI to tackle physics problems for the team's car
• Breaking down organizational and data silos across departments
• Building financial and predictive data models
• Advising the team on how the sport's regulators might govern AI use

The Mercedes team didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why does this hire matter?

Lee's move is further proof of how AI is reshaping the job market, even at the highest levels of corporate America. The AI boom has set off an arms race for talent, and industries outside Silicon Valley are competing to secure expertise. In June, Dr. James Smith, who once worked at Google's AI lab DeepMind, joined the Williams Formula 1 team as its new chief information officer.

Formula 1 isn't an obvious landing spot for a healthcare AI researcher. Lee acknowledged the two industries are very different — but he said they share core traits.

"In both healthcare delivery and in medical research, and in Formula 1, you are oftentimes in collaborative situations where a group of very well-trained people are working together with a deficit of information and having to make highly consequential rapid decisions," Lee said. The question then becomes: "What is the best way to inject technology like AI into this in a way that helps as [opposed] to distract?"

The personal pull is real, too. "I have always wanted to be a racer. When I was young, I grew up racing carts," Lee said. "I'm completely thrilled, and I'm in disbelief that they would think of me for something like this."

What did Lee actually build at Microsoft?

Plenty. His mandate, according to the company, was to "accelerate the pace of discovery in the physical, biological, and medical sciences through the use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies."

He worked on diagnostics, precision medicine and clinician tools. One project, InnerEye, sought to automate the laborious outlining of tumors and healthy tissue for radiation-treatment planning. He also helped assess OpenAI's GPT-4 before its public release and identify its potential in medicine.

In 2024, Time magazine named Lee one of the 100 most influential people in health and life sciences.

The institution-level results came too. In 2025, Microsoft revealed an AI tool it said could diagnose disease four times more accurately than a group of doctors, at a fraction of the cost. The company also partnered with the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School to improve products like its Copilot AI assistant, though it has more recently focused Copilot on business use rather than general or medical use.

That track record — squeezing better decisions out of scarce data — is exactly what an F1 team spends hundreds of millions chasing.

How does this fit Microsoft's wider exits?

Lee's change comes amid a wave of departures from Microsoft this year, as CEO Satya Nadella reorients the company to win the enterprise and cloud sides of AI. Ryan Roslansky, an executive vice president who also served as LinkedIn CEO, recently announced he's leaving, as is chief communications officer Frank X. Shaw. Earlier this year, longtime executives including gaming chief Phil Spencer and Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of experiences and devices, retired.

For Mercedes, the bet is that Lee's decade-plus of applying AI under pressure transfers from the clinic to the paddock. For Lee, it's a one-year deal to find out whether it does.