Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean is leaving the company after twenty-seven years of continuous work. Together with three colleagues, he is launching a new startup in the field of artificial intelligence called Discovery Loop. The co-founders included Oriol Vinals, a leading researcher at DeepMind, Kuok Le, a researcher, and Sanjay Gemawat, a Google veteran. Dean will take over the post of CEO of the new organization. The main goal of the project will be to accelerate technological development by automating complex multi-stage scientific and engineering tasks. At the initial stage, the team will focus on automating research in the field of machine learning, and then plans to apply best practices in equipment design and drug development. The startup will operate as a commercial company designed to bring public benefit.

Discovery Loop is already attracting seed investments from Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures funds. Alphabet's parent company is also participating in the round, which has agreed to provide its own cloud facilities to the project. The exact amount of investment and the startup's valuation have not yet been disclosed. Against the background of Dean's departure, Google announced a large-scale reorganization of its own artificial intelligence division. The head of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, will move to the position of chairman of the laboratory and chief researcher at Alphabet. He will continue to lead the Isomorphic Labs division, which develops modern medicines. DeepMind Technical Director Korai Kavukciuoglu will assume the post of Senior Vice President and will report directly to Sundar Pichai, overseeing the development of the Gemini model.

Google has recently experienced a significant outflow of highly qualified personnel. In June of this year, Gemini's co-head of AI model development, Noam Shazir, joined OpenAI. Senior researcher John Jumper also left Google DeepMind to work at Anthropic. In July, the management disbanded the team of creators of the AlphaFold model, which had previously won the Nobel Prize for predicting protein structures. Some of the specialists were transferred to projects related to the Gemini chatbot, while others joined Isomorphic Labs. Against the background of news about the departure of key engineers and the reorganization of the division, Google shares on the stock exchange fell by almost four percent. Market participants are closely monitoring personnel changes in leading technology companies.