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, he said, he’ll focus on four main 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, and advising the team on how the sport’s regulators might govern AI use.

His exact title is still under discussion, but he’s expected to join on a one-year contract with an option for a second.

“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 didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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, for example, Dr. James Smith, who once worked at Google’s AI lab DeepMind, joined the Williams Formula 1 team as its new chief information officer. 

Lee’s change also 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.

At Microsoft, Lee’s responsibility 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. 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 as one of the 100 most influential people in health and life sciences. 

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 institutions such as 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.

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

“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 then becomes: “What is the best way to inject technology like AI into this in a way that helps as [opposed] to distract?”