Jeff Dean, a legendary Google engineer and cofounder of Google Brain, is leaving the company after nearly 27 years, along with three other top AI scientists, to found a startup called Discovery Loop. The announcement was made official on July 25, just after Dean spoke to 6,000 would-be founders at Y Combinator’s Startup School in San Francisco, where he discussed his interest in automating the scientific method.
The new company’s cofounders include Sanjay Ghemawat, a long-time collaborator who helped build Google’s core computing and search infrastructure; Oriol Vinyals, VP of research at DeepMind and a technical lead for Gemini; and Quoc Le, cofounder of Google Brain and key scientist behind AutoML-Zero. Dean described the idea as coming together only a few weeks ago, with the group being both colleagues and friends who vacation together.
Discovery Loop plans to build automated experiment loops that initially improve its own machine learning algorithms, then expand to fields like chip design, biology, drug discovery, and material design. The founders envision AI as the researcher, not just a tool for research, with the goal of allowing small teams to out-invent large research organizations. They have set up the company as a public benefit corporation and secured funding from Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, though the amount and valuation were not disclosed. Vinod Khosla called it “the ultimate superstar team,” and Radical’s Jordan Jacobs will join the board.
Negotiating the exit was difficult, with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai trying over multiple meetings to keep them. Ultimately, Google gave its blessing, took a stake, and agreed to provide compute power for the first year. Pichai acknowledged their contributions, noting their role in early search infrastructure and the neural networks that shaped modern AI. The team has not yet hired staff or rented office space, and Dean sheepishly confirmed he will serve as CEO. The startup’s mission is not entirely new, but the founders are betting their expertise will make it work. The immediate question is whether their startup’s impact will match the talent gap they create at Google.
Source: Wired