Google's Chief Scientist Steps Down to Launch AI Startup for Accelerating Scientific Discoveries

Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist and one of its first employees, is leaving the company to found an AI startup called Discovery Loop, focused on automating scientific and engineering tasks. He is joined by three other Google alumni. Alphabet's stock drops more than 3.5% on Nasdaq. The company will provide cloud services and be an investor in the venture.

Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist and one of its first employees, is leaving the company to found a new artificial intelligence startup called Discovery Loop. Dean, who joined Google as its 30th employee in 1999, will serve as CEO of the new company, whose stated goal is to accelerate the pace of technological development by automating complex scientific and engineering tasks. In its initial phase, the company will focus on automating research and engineering processes in machine learning, and later plans to apply the technology to areas such as hardware design, drug discovery, and clean energy. Dean is joined by three other Google alumni: Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le, and Sanjay Ghemawat. The four were partners in breakthroughs in mathematics and protein structure research and are among the most cited researchers in the world. Alphabet's stock is losing more than 3.5% on Nasdaq. Alphabet will provide Discovery Loop with cloud services and computing resources, and it is also one of the investors in the venture. Venture capital funds Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures are leading the initial funding round, which has not yet been completed. Dean said in an interview that the four discussed the idea for a while and were enthusiastic about it, and that by automating stages in the experimental cycle, the pace of discoveries can be accelerated.