Jeff Dean and three other Google execs are leaving to launch Discovery Loop, which will seek AI-powered breakthroughs in drug discovery, chip design, and more

Jeff Dean and other high-profile Google executives have founded Discovery Loop, a startup that will seek AI-powered breakthroughs …

Wired 2026-08-05 Steven Levy

Context & Ripple Effects

Jeff Dean’s move follows a period in which he remained deeply connected to the startup ecosystem, including backing dozens of AI startups while leading Google’s AI research. Discovery Loop begins with seed backing from Radical Ventures, Khosla Ventures and others, while Google retains a stake.

The company enters an emerging AI-for-design field already being pursued by Larry Page’s Dynatomics, which is using LLMs for optimized object designs. The departure of four Google executives makes the venture a more consequential test of whether frontier AI research teams can operate outside a large platform company.

First-order effects

Google loses Jeff Dean and three other executives, while preserving a financial link to Discovery Loop through its stake in the new company.
Discovery Loop gains a founding team with Google AI leadership experience and seed investors to pursue work spanning drug discovery and chip design.

Second-order effects

Dynatomics and Discovery Loop now become more directly comparable efforts in AI-assisted design, increasing competition for specialized technical talent and investor attention.
Google’s stake gives it exposure to Discovery Loop’s work without keeping the departing executives inside its own research organization.

Third-order effects

If similarly credentialed teams continue to leave major AI labs with backing already in place, frontier research talent may increasingly organize around independent, narrowly focused companies rather than remain concentrated inside platforms.
The pattern would make ownership stakes and investment relationships a more important way for incumbents to stay connected to research spun out by former leaders.

The trend: Senior AI researchers are increasingly pairing independent startups with strategic ties to the platforms they leave, particularly around high-value scientific and engineering applications.

Discussion

@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Announcing Discovery Loop! I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine [image…
@stevesi Steven Sinofsky on x
Congratulations on the truly generational accomplishments of @JeffDean , @GhemawatSanjay, and team. The fusing of academic pursuit with product development has been a brass ring of corporate labs for at least the history of computer science. There are many successful labs
@zeffmax Max Zeff on x
Google's Jeff Dean, Oriol Vinyals, and other execs are leaving to launch their own startup. When chatting to @StevenLevy for @WIRED, Vinyals gestures at the challenges of navigating google 👀 [image]
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Our immediate order of business is to find office space, and hire an amazing founding team over the next few weeks. We want to create an awesome environment with a great culture of technical excellence, teamwork, respect, and ambition. We'll also start building our
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
We created a pitch deck to tell a handful of VC firms about us and what we were up to (a fun experience!). Here's a few slides about our background and some of the things we've worked on from the pitch deck (it was fun putting together the list of people in our teams who have [im…
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Super excited to back this super star team at@khoslaventures on its quest for huge impact. Could be larger than the impact that Google had
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Super excited to back this super star team on its quest for huge impact. Could be larger than the impact that Google had
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We'll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in […
@sundarpichai Sundar Pichai on x
I also want to give a huge thanks to the incomparable @JeffDean after an incredible 27-year run at Google. He's off to start his own public benefit corporation with @Sanjay_Ghemawat focused on accelerating discoveries across ML, science, & engineering. @Google will support as a
@quocleix Quoc Le on x
Excited to co-found Discovery Loop with my long-time collaborators @JeffDean @Sanjay_Ghemawat @OriolVinyalsML . Our mission is to automate machine learning, engineering and science. Learn more at: https://www.discoveryloop.com/ ♾
@oriolvinyalsml Oriol Vinyals on x
Thirteen years ago, a quick email exchange with @JeffDean brought me to @Google. After an unforgettable journey from Brain, to DeepMind, and to @GoogleDeepMind, working on seq2seq or distillation, and co-leading huge projects such as AlphaStar, and Gemini, I'm saying goodbye to […
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
We are excited to back @JeffDean, @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @quocleix, and @OriolVinyalsML as they build what's next at Discovery Loop. They have spent decades pushing the frontiers of AI research and infrastructure from Google Brain to TensorFlow to TPUs. The next great frontier for
@sanjay_ghemawat Sanjay Ghemawat on x
I am excited to announce that I, along with my long-time colleagues (@JeffDean, @OriolVinyalsML, @quocleix), are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a public benefit corporation. We aim to automate the process of discovery and progress in machine learning, science, and
@michaelmclean.me Michael McLean on bluesky
This is huge news. Jeff is a titan. — Also a 'where there's smoke' situation for the haters. [embedded post]
@stevenlevy Steven Levy on bluesky
Here's a shattering Jeff Dean fact: Google's top scientist, along with Sanjay Ghemawat and 2 other top AI researcher are leaving Google to form Discovery Loop, a startup that hopes to automate the scientific method so AI can create breakthroughs in multiple fields. www.wired.com/…
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
Tomorrow will be my last day at Google after 27 years, and watching it grow from 25 people to 190,000+ has been an amazing journey. Below is a note I shared with many people internally at Google today. An excerpt is: It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you and to help […
@gergelyorosz Gergely Orosz on x
Probably the biggest startup announcement of the year (decade?) in terms of the calibre of founders. If I had to name the top 10 engineers currently or previously at Google in terms of impact it would be the two cofounders (Larry and Sergey) and all 4 of these folks:
@andrewyng Andrew Ng on x
Congratulations @JeffDean, @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix! Knowing you guys, this will be amazing. Cheering you on and wishing you well on your important work!
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
Absolute A-list team, leaving on good terms with Google, but still another big loss for Google.
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
Jeff Dean is leaving Google after nearly 27 years, and it is difficult to overstate his impact on modern computing. He co-created MapReduce and Bigtable, helped build the infrastructure behind Google Search, co-founded Google Brain and played a key role in TensorFlow. He helped […
@scottew Scott Wessman on x
Underrated factor in AI right now: California prohibits non-competes, so AI startups don't need founders to sit on the sidelines for 12-24 months—a direct factor in people founding Anthropic, SSI, Thinking Machines, now Discovery Loop. Speed of innovation goes up.
@jeffdean Jeff Dean on x
One more fun slide from our pitch deck. [image]
@pitdesi Sheel Mohnot on x
Jeff Dean (30th employee of Google, there since 1999) is leaving to start a company with @Sanjay_Ghemawat& other Google AI leadership. He raised a round from Radical VC, Khosla and Google, size not reported $GOOG -4% today
@midnight_captl Nick Dorsey on x
Excerpt from the @WSJ article published this morning on Jeff Deans departure: >We wanted to build something differently than how things are built at Google right now >Google's infrastructure has very different requirements than the type of infrastructure we want to build for [ima…
@vkhosla Vinod Khosla on x
Super excited to back this super star team at @khoslaventures on its quest for huge impact. Could be larger than the impact that @Google had when we backed them at Kleiner in 1998 and @OpenAI in 2018 at @khoslaventures
@sophiadew Sophia Dew on x
bring the benefits of science and technology to the world much faster act as a deeply positive, empowering force for humanity, delivering technology solutions that improve people's live on a global scale techno optimism core
@ziv_ravid Ravid Shwartz Ziv on x
Wow, Jeff, Sanjay, Oriol, and Quoc are leaving Google to start their own “automation” startup. All of them are true legends and It's definitely the end of an era...
@himanshustwts Himanshu on x
Sir Jeff Dean just announced the new company - Discovery Loop! Yet, another big signal for Autoresearch! [image]
@swyx @swyx on x
even the best founding team with all the money in the world is rate limited by bay area real estate smh [image]
@chandnirao_here Chandni Rao on x
loving the humility involved in the 3 team background slides instead of having just one that says “most of modern ai exists because of us”. also the super matter-of-fact “we selected” our investors (of course), which is exactly how this should work! and woah, @radicalvcfund's
Yvonne Likomanova Yvonne Likomanova on linkedin
AI has already transformed how we work. The next chapter is transforming how we discover. — I'm incredibly excited to welcome DiscoveryLoop to the Radical Ventures portfolio 🚀 …
Demitri Swan Demitri Swan on linkedin
Jeff Dean is leaving Google... The engineer who build so much critical infrastructure and moved into to leadership at the highest levels is leaving. …
@mrsdeborahlynn Deborah Lynn on bluesky
www.wired.com/story/jeff-d... 4 of Google's Top AI Brains Are Leaving—and Launching Their Own AI Startup. — An automated version of the scientific method. “You propose an experiment, you implement what you need to run the experiment, you evaluate the experiment, and then you …
@vin_sachi Vin Sachidananda on x
Jeff, Sanjay, Oriol and Quoc are giants in the field of AI and have contributed to most of the science that's advanced AI this past decade Very excited @radicalvcfund has co-led @DiscoLoopAI seed and looking forward to seeing heroes of mine build a generational frontier AI lab
@jonchu Jon Chu on x
Very excited to have @khoslaventures be a part of this. It's impossibly hard to convince one luminary to join a company. A company full of industry shaking giants will inevitably be earth changing 🙂
@danprimack Dan Primack on x
The seed round was co-led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, Doerr Capital, and Alphabet.
@radicalvcfund @radicalvcfund on x
Radical Ventures is very proud to co-lead the seed round of @DiscoLoopAI @JeffDean @Sanjay_Ghemawat @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix helped build the modern AI stack. Now, they are combining frontier AI and massive-scale compute to automate the scientific method itself. The future […
Rob Toews Rob Toews on linkedin
We at Radical Ventures are thrilled to be co-leading the inception round in DiscoveryLoop. — Jeff Dean, Oriol Vinyals, Quoc V. Le and Sanjay Ghemawat are giants in the world of AI. …
@dynamicwebpaige @dynamicwebpaige on x
Story time: the first time I took a walk with @JeffDean, we grabbed coffee and wandered around University Ave in Palo Alto. A family in a car called out to us, asking (first in Spanish) for directions to the nearest clinic. Jeff pulled out his phone, opened @GoogleMaps, and
@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
OMG. They didn't want to work with TPUs. Jensen is probably calling Jeff Dean RIGHT NOW 🤣 “Google's infrastructure works well for big consumer apps, large ad systems and search. But, he said, it has “very different requirements than the type of infrastructure we want to build
Daniele Micci-Barreca Daniele Micci-Barreca on linkedin
If there is one person who single-handedly changed the course of Google that one probably Jeff Dean, whose passion and brilliance drove the creations …
Steven Levy Steven Levy on linkedin
No one has arguably had a bigger impact on Google's technology than Jeff Dean. With his colleague Sanjay Ghemawat, he wrote much of the company's infrastructure …
@willknight Will Knight on x
losing Jeff Dean feels like a big thing for Google. not only is he a brilliant engineer, he's also quite clearly a really lovely person. I ran into him at NeurIPS about a decade ago, before it was enormous, and he happily just chatted about what was cool and interesting in AI for

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