The record
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- Demis Hassabis says DeepMind's 2014 sale to Google came down to money: he calculated he needed roughly $7 billion to compete with global tech giants while his startup was raising barely $10 million at a time.
- DeepMind had no product or revenue, and big companies were poaching its researchers with offers of up to $10 million against salaries of $100,000.
- DeepMind was sold to Google for $650 million in January 2014 after talks with Facebook collapsed, and Hassabis later pushed for semi-independence through negotiations codenamed 'Project Mario' before eventually standing down.
- He now leads Google DeepMind, whose Gemini handles over 10 billion tokens a minute, while Alphabet has earmarked $175-185 billion for AI infrastructure.
What to watch next
- How Alphabet's $175-185 billion AI infrastructure spending shapes Google DeepMind's research direction
- Whether Hassabis retains any operational autonomy at Google DeepMind after abandoning the oversight board plan
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Named United Kingdom · United States · DeepMind · Google DeepMind · Alphabet · Demis Hassabis · Facebook · Google · Mustafa Suleyman · Reid Hoffman · Sebastian Mallaby · Sundar Pichai · Times of India
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