Microsoft recently announced that Reid Hoffman, who has served as a company director for nearly ten years, will officially leave Microsoft’s board of directors. Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board in 2016, the same year Microsoft acquired the professional social networking platform LinkedIn, which he co-founded, for $26.2 billion. Since then, he has witnessed several important strategic layouts by Microsoft in recent years, particularly its investments and collaborations in the field of artificial intelligence. During Hoffman's tenure, Microsoft invested an initial $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, launching a long-term partnership between the two companies. Hoffman himself was also an early investor in OpenAI and previously served on its board of directors. In 2023, he resigned from his position at OpenAI due to potential conflicts of interest. Additionally, he witnessed Microsoft reach cooperation agreements with AI startup Inflection AI. Through this deal worth approximately $650 million, Microsoft obtained partial licensing rights to Inflection AI’s technologies and onboarded core team members including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. Speaking about the reasons for leaving Microsoft’s board, Hoffman stated on his podcast program "Possible" that he hopes to return to "Founder Mode," dedicating more time to his latest entrepreneurial venture, Manus. He noted that during the past month, the rapid development pace of Manus made him realize the need for deeper involvement in building the company. Public records show that Manus is a startup focused on AI-driven drug discovery, committed to using artificial intelligence technologies to accelerate the process of developing new drugs. The company completed multiple rounds of seed financing last year, raising over $50 million cumulatively. Hoffman is one of the co-founders of Manus and serves as chairman. The company’s CEO is Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize winner, whose representative work *The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer* has received widespread attention. Hoffman indicated that Manus is exploring next-generation AI capabilities capable of surpassing human creativity in chemistry, hoping these technologies can advance treatment research for major diseases such as cancer. He believes that artificial intelligence is bringing unprecedented breakthrough opportunities to pharmaceutical R&D, and Manus’ progress has solidified his determination to fully commit to this direction.