Google Loses Four AI Luminaries to New Startup Discovery Loop

After nearly 27 years at Google, legendary engineer Jeff Dean is leaving the company alongside three other top AI scientists to launch a startup called Discovery Loop. Dean, cofounder of Google Brain and a key figure behind the Gemini AI model, revealed the move on July 25, just weeks after quietly organizing the venture.

The new company aims to automate the scientific method, running thousands of autonomous experiment loops to drive breakthroughs in fields like biology, chip design, and drug discovery. The team includes Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le - all prominent names in AI research. They plan to first apply their system to improve their own machine learning algorithms before expanding to other domains.

Google will take a stake in Discovery Loop and provide compute power for the first year. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai praised the departing engineers for their contributions and said Google will continue to collaborate with the startup. The founders have not yet hired staff or rented office space, and Dean confirmed he will serve as CEO. Funding came from Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, among others, though the amount and valuation were not disclosed. The team described the exit negotiations with Google as difficult, but they ultimately chose the freedom of building something new. |

Source: Wired