Jeff Dean and other top AI researchers are leaving Google to launch their own startup | TechCrunch

A group of Google's most prominent artificial intelligence pioneers, including long-term executive and key engineer Jeff Dean, are departing the search giant to establish an independent technology venture.

Joining Dean in this endeavor are several senior researchers and computer scientists, including Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le, and Oriol Vinyals. The newly formed enterprise, established as a public benefit corporation named Discovery Loop, will be led by Dean in the role of chief executive officer. This transition marks a significant shift for Dean, who was Google's thirtieth employee and spent decades developing its foundational search index infrastructure and guiding its modern neural network achievements.

Discovery Loop aims to revolutionize the scientific method by utilizing advanced machine learning algorithms to automate and run thousands of parallel laboratory simulations and tests. The company's primary focus is to eliminate the sequential human delays inherent in traditional research, potentially allowing software to conduct autonomous experimental cycles and pursue recursive self-improvement. The startup has successfully secured initial funding co-led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with additional participation from several prominent venture firms and Google's parent organization, Alphabet. The founders envision that accelerating these cycles through high-scale computation will dramatically shorten the timeline required to deliver breakthroughs in science and engineering.