{"id":720760,"date":"2026-04-09T18:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T18:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:55:10","slug":"demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger\/","title":{"rendered":"Demis Hassabis says Google DeepMind had to return to its startup roots after the Brain merger"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2182d3da1f3\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2182d3da1f3\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger\/#Assembling_the_ingredients\" >Assembling the ingredients<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger\/#The_90_claim\" >The 90% claim<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger\/#The_second_workday\" >The second workday<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/demis-hassabis-says-google-deepmind-had-to-return-to-its-startup-roots-after-the-brain-merger\/#The_competitive_framing\" >The competitive framing<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2026\/04\/google-deepmind-hassabis-startup-pace.png\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-main-content\">\n<p><em><strong>In short:<\/strong><span>\u00a0<\/span>Demis Hassabis, speaking on the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings in early April 2026, described how Google DeepMind has accelerated its pace over the past two to three years by merging Google Brain\u2019s compute resources with DeepMind\u2019s research culture and returning to what he called a \u201cstartup or entrepreneurial\u201d way of working. He also disclosed that he runs Isomorphic Labs, the group\u2019s pharmaceutical AI spinoff, as a \u201csecond workday\u201d beginning around 10pm, ahead of expected human trials in oncology later this year.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Assembling_the_ingredients\"><\/span>Assembling the ingredients<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Google DeepMind\u2019s formal merger of DeepMind and Google Brain completed in 2023. Hassabis described the period since as one of deliberate acceleration: aligning talent \u201cfrom around the company, sort of pushing in one direction,\u201d gaining access to the compute infrastructure that DeepMind had previously lacked at scale, and driving what he called \u201crelentless sort of focus and pace.\u201d In his characterisation, the transformation required a cultural adjustment as much as a structural one: the organisation had to \u201ccome back to almost our startup or entrepreneurial roots and be scr<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ier, be faster, ship things really quickly.\u201d The current competitive environment, he said, was \u201cferocious.\u201d Veteran employees with careers of 20 and 30 years were telling him it was \u201cthe most intense environment they\u2019ve ever seen, perhaps ever in the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a> industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hassabis said he speaks to Sundar Pichai, Alphabet\u2019s chief executive, \u201cevery day,\u201d reflecting the degree to which Google DeepMind now operates at the operational centre of Alphabet\u2019s product and research strategy. That proximity is matched by a capital commitment of corresponding scale.<span>\u00a0<\/span>Google\u2019s compute build-out, developed in part through its custom chip partnerships with companies including Broadcom, is central to that positioning: Alphabet spent $91.4 billion on capital expenditure in 2025 and has guided for between $175 billion and $185 billion in 2026, a near-doubling, with supply constraints rather than capital availability described as the primary limiting factor.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_90_claim\"><\/span>The 90% claim<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>One of Hassabis\u2019s more assertive statements in the podcast concerned DeepMind\u2019s contribution to the history of AI. He said approximately 90% of the breakthroughs underpinning the modern AI industry were produced by either Google Brain, Google Research, or DeepMind. The claim is broadly consistent with the academic record on foundational developments, including the transformer architecture produced by Google Brain in 2017, early work on reinforcement learning from human feedback, and deep reinforcement learning techniques developed at DeepMind. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Hassabis and John Jumper and shared with David Baker, for the AlphaFold protein-folding system is the most formally recognised of those achievements. Whether 90% is accurate as a proportion is a matter of interpretation, and the industry has pluralised substantially since those foundational papers. The framing functions as a positioning statement as much as a historical claim.<\/p>\n<div class=\"inarticle-wrapper channel-cta\">\n<div class=\"ica-text\">\n<p class=\"ica-text__title\">TNW City Coworking space &#8211; Where your best work happens<\/p>\n<p>A workspace designed for growth, collaboration, and endless networking opportunities in the heart of tech.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The operational consequence of that legacy is a product release cadence that has accelerated sharply.<span>\u00a0<\/span>Google\u2019s open-weight model programme, most recently Gemma 4, now releases models built from the same research and training infrastructure as Gemini 3, closing a gap between frontier research and open-source contributions that previously existed. Gemini reached approximately 750 million monthly active users by the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, with Gemini 3 described in secondary reporting as having prompted an urgent internal response at OpenAI on its release in November of that year.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_second_workday\"><\/span>The second workday<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Alongside leading Google DeepMind, Hassabis also runs Isomorphic Labs, the pharmaceutical AI spinoff that DeepMind established in 2021. He described his working arrangement in the 20VC conversation: a first workday at DeepMind, followed by a \u201c<em>second workday<\/em>\u201d beginning around 10pm dedicated to Isomorphic\u2019s drug discovery programme. The dual commitment reflects a conviction that applying AI to drug discovery is both Hassabis\u2019s most important long-term ambition and a project that requires sustained personal involvement rather than delegation.<\/p>\n<p>Isomorphic raised $600 million in April 2025 and has existing partnership agreements with Eli Lilly and Novartis with combined milestone values of up to $3 billion. In February 2026, the company released IsoDDE, a drug design tool that Isomorphic says doubles the accuracy of AlphaFold 3 for generating drug candidates. Human clinical trials in oncology are expected later in 2026. The competitive dynamics in AI-driven drug discovery are intensifying across the industry:<span>\u00a0<\/span>Anthropic\u2019s acquisition of Coefficient Bio for approximately $400 million in April 2026, a stealth startup founded by former Genentech computational biology researchers, signals that <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>-purpose AI companies are now treating pharmaceutical discovery as a product category, not merely a demonstration of model capability.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_competitive_framing\"><\/span>The competitive framing<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The 20VC podcast conversation, like Sebastian Mallaby\u2019s biography of Hassabis, \u201cThe Infinity Machine,\u201d published on 31 March 2026 and based on more than 30 hours of interviews, presents a researcher who has moved into the most commercially urgent phase of his career with a consistent thesis: that the most important research and the most important products are not separate activities, and that the organisation capable of doing both simultaneously at frontier scale will determine the shape of the industry.<span>\u00a0<\/span>The year 2025 consolidated AI as a central strategic priority across the technology industry, with capital, talent, and institutional structure all reorganised around the question of pace. For Hassabis, the answer has been to bring the speed of a startup inside the resource base of one of the world\u2019s largest technology companies, and to treat that combination as a durable advantage.<\/p>\n<p>The scale of the capital flowing into the field makes that advantage harder to sustain.<span>\u00a0<\/span>SoftBank\u2019s $40 billion bridge loan to OpenAI<span>\u00a0<\/span>represents a form of capitalisation that even Alphabet\u2019s compute commitments cannot trivially match in kind. Hassabis\u2019s account of a \u201cferocious\u201d competitive environment is not rhetorical: it is a structural description of a race in which the resources of incumbents and the ambitions of challengers have converged to a point where institutional inertia is not merely a disadvantage but a disqualifying one. The startup mentality he describes at Google DeepMind is, in that context, a necessity rather than a preference.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/news\/google-deepmind-hassabis-startup-pace\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In short:\u00a0Demis Hassabis, speaking on the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings in early April 2026, described how Google DeepMind has accelerated its pace over the past two to three years by merging Google Brain\u2019s compute resources with DeepMind\u2019s research culture and returning to what he called a \u201cstartup or entrepreneurial\u201d way of working. He also&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":720761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2026\/04\/google-deepmind-hassabis-startup-pace.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}