Peter Lee, president of Microsoft Science, is departing the company after 16 years and plans to take up a newly created AI advisor role with the Mercedes Formula 1 team, he told Fortune.

During his tenure, Lee helped shape Microsoft's science and research agenda, exploring how AI can help doctors and scientists tackle hard problems in the physical, biological, and medical sciences. At Mercedes, he said, he will pursue four main goals: applying AI to physics problems involving the team's car, breaking down organizational and data silos across departments, building financial and predictive data models, and advising the team on how the sport's regulators might govern the use of AI.

His exact title has yet to be finalized, but he is expected to join on a one-year contract with an option for a second year.

"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."

The Mercedes team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lee's move is the latest sign 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 far beyond Silicon Valley are competing to secure expertise. In June, for example, Dr. James Smith, who previously worked at Google's AI lab DeepMind, joined the Williams Formula 1 team as its new chief information officer. Taken together, the moves mark Formula 1 as a new frontier in the AI talent race, with teams now recruiting senior AI expertise directly from major technology companies and research labs.

His departure also lands amid a broader wave of exits from Microsoft this year, as CEO Satya Nadella reorients the company around winning the enterprise and cloud sides of AI. Ryan Roslansky, an executive vice president who also served as LinkedIn's CEO, recently announced he is leaving, as has 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. Lee's exit stands apart from those moves: his portfolio centered on applying AI to science and medicine, a mandate distinct from the enterprise and cloud focus now driving Microsoft's AI strategy.

At Microsoft, Lee's mandate was to "accelerate the pace of discovery in the physical, biological, and medical sciences through the use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies," according to the company. His work spanned diagnostics, precision medicine, and clinician tools. One project, InnerEye, set out to automate the laborious task of outlining tumors and healthy tissue for radiation-treatment planning. Lee also helped assess OpenAI's GPT-4 ahead of 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. In 2025, Microsoft unveiled 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 institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School to improve products like its Copilot AI assistant, though it has more recently steered Copilot toward business use rather than general or medical applications.

Lee acknowledged that Formula 1 and health care are very different industries, but he said they share some essential characteristics.

"In both health care 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," he said. The question, he added, is "What is the best way to inject technology like AI into this in a way that helps as [opposed] to distract?"

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.