Jeff Dean Exits Google to Co-Found AI Firm Discovery Loop with Alphabet Investment
Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist for 27 years and one of its most influential engineers, is leaving the company to co-found a new public-benefit AI firm called Discovery Loop. Along with him are three other top Google veterans: Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le.
Dean's departure is not just a personal exit, but also a strategic move for Alphabet, Google's parent company. Instead of competing against Dean's new venture, Alphabet will be investing in it as a founding investor and cloud partner, alongside other investors like Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Discovery Loop aims to automate scientific and engineering research using AI, focusing initially on drug discovery and chip design. This approach has raised some eyebrows, as both fields are already crowded and capital-intensive. However, the company's founders believe that their technology can scale beyond what human research teams can achieve.
The departure of Dean and his team has triggered a reshuffle within Google's AI org. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down to become chairman of the unit and chief scientist of Alphabet, while Koray Kavukcuoglu will take over Gemini model development as senior vice president.