Top Google Researchers Leave to Start Own AI Company with Alphabet's Blessing

Alphabet's top AI researchers are leaving Google to start their own company. Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist and a 27-year veteran of the company, is leaving along with Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le. The four are starting Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation that plans to use AI to automate scientific and engineering research.

The new company has received investment from Alphabet, which will also be its cloud partner. This news led to a 4% drop in Alphabet's shares on Wednesday, erasing about $185 billion of market value.

Alphabet is losing some top talent, but it is not without a plan. CEO Sundar Pichai said that Dean wants to try something new and the company is excited to support him. Demis Hassabis will become the chair of Google DeepMind and Alphabet's chief scientist, while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over the unit's day-to-day operations.

The departures are not a cause for concern as Alphabet's cloud segment continues to grow rapidly. The segment's revenue reached $24.8 billion last quarter, with growth accelerating from 32% a year ago to 82% now.