AIMPACT News, May 19 (UTC+8): According to monitoring by Beating, the Financial Times revealed that Demis Hassabis, founder of Google’s AI lab DeepMind, was an early angel investor in competitor Anthropic—a previously undisclosed stake that has sent ripples through the industry. As one of the world’s most highly valued AI unicorns, Anthropic recently agreed to a new round of funding worth $30 billion at a $900 billion valuation. Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO, Dario Amodei, has long regarded Hassabis as a role model. On the corporate level, Google has invested billions of dollars into Anthropic as part of its strategic collaboration in cloud services and AI. This is not the first time Hassabis has invested in startups founded by former colleagues. Since selling DeepMind to Google for £400 million in 2014, he has repeatedly made personal investments in ventures launched by ex-DeepMind team members, including Inflection AI, founded by former DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman; Ineffable Intelligence, established by long-time collaborator David Silver; and the UK startup incubator Entrepreneurs First. Hassabis’s personal angel investments intersect with the exodus of talent from DeepMind, revealing the complex power dynamics of AI’s golden generation. These top-tier professionals are both direct business competitors and interconnected through networks of capital and relationships. Data shows that since 2021, former DeepMind researchers have founded more than a dozen AI companies, raising at least $14 billion in total funding. Notable examples include Isomorphic Labs, a drug discovery company, and David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence—both of which raised over $3 billion in the past month alone. Additionally, prominent startups such as Mistral AI, legal AI unicorn Harvey, and novel materials search engine Cusp.ai also feature numerous DeepMind alumni. In parallel with this talent outflow, key DeepMind executives are now assuming full control over Google’s AI operations. Last year, Chief Technology Officer Koray Kavukcuoglu was promoted to Google’s Chief AI Architect; last month, Pushmeet Kohli, who led the AlphaFold project, was appointed Chief Scientist at Google Cloud. Although Hassabis’s influence within Google has reached its peak, DeepMind continues to remain headquartered in London’s King’s Cross rather than relocating to Silicon Valley, helping to cultivate a vast European ecosystem of AI innovation. (Source: BlockBeats)
DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis secretly invests in Anthropic; DeepMind alumni raise $14B
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Summary
AI and crypto news outlets report that Demis Hassabis, founder of DeepMind, is an early investor in Anthropic, a rival AI company. Anthropic recently closed a $30 billion funding round at a $900 billion valuation. Hassabis has also supported startups such as Inflection AI and Ineffable Intelligence. Project funding data shows that former DeepMind researchers have raised at least $140 billion since 2021, including through Isomorphic Labs and Cusp.ai. DeepMind executives are now assuming key roles within Google’s AI division.
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