Top Google minds quit to build AI that accelerates research

Four prominent Google engineers, including Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, are departing the tech giant to co-found a new company called Discovery Loop. The venture aims to accelerate research and development using AI across various domains. Alphabet, Google's parent company, and Radical Ventures have invested in Discovery Loop, alongside Khosla Ventures.

The founding team's extensive experience spans multiple generations of core Google products like Search, Ads, Translate, Tensor Processing Units, DeepMind's AlphaFold and Gemini AI. They seek to tackle the slow and labor-intensive nature of scientific progress, historically reliant on sequential human iterations. By harnessing AI, Discovery Loop hopes to develop systems that positively impact humanity, from drug development to addressing environmental crises.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressed confidence in the team's ability to drive significant technological transitions, while Google's cloud business remains a major driver of the company's financial success.