{"id":735036,"date":"2026-06-23T15:50:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/google-taps-its-alumni-network-for-a-new-ai-startup-incubator\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T15:50:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:50:28","slug":"google-taps-its-alumni-network-for-a-new-ai-startup-incubator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/google-taps-its-alumni-network-for-a-new-ai-startup-incubator\/","title":{"rendered":"Google taps its alumni network for a new AI startup incubator"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article-main-content\">\n<p><em>Google is building an AI startup incubator that draws on its network of former employees, the so-called \u201cXooglers\u201d, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-06-23\/google-taps-employee-alumni-network-with-ai-startup-incubator\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">according to Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The pitch is neat in its logic: as some of the company\u2019s most capable people leave to start their own AI ventures, an incubator built around alumni keeps Google close to them, and close to whatever they build next.The move would slot into machinery Google has already assembled.<\/p>\n<p>The company runs the\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/labs.google\/aifuturesfund\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI Futures Fund<\/a>, a joint effort from Google DeepMind and Google Labs that pairs equity funding with technical collaboration and early access to DeepMind\u2019s models, typically co-investing up to around $2m in early-stage frontier startups.<\/p>\n<p>Alongside it sit the Google for Startups accelerators, equity-free and cohort-based. An alumni incubator would add a third channel, one aimed squarely at people who already know how Google works because they used to work there.<\/p>\n<div class=\"inarticle-wrapper latest channel-cta hs-embed-tnw\">\n<div id=\"hs-embed-tnw\" class=\"channel-cta-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"channel-cta-img\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/hardfork-2018\/uploads\/visuals\/tnw-newsletter.png\"\/><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/hardfork-2018\/uploads\/visuals\/tnw-newsletter.png\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"channel-cta-input\">\n<p class=\"channel-cta-title\">The \ud83d\udc9c of EU tech<\/p>\n<p class=\"channel-cta-tagline\">The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol&#8217; founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It&#8217;s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The <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>eal of that focus is practical: a former employee needs no introduction to the company\u2019s systems, its researchers, or its models, which makes the relationship cheaper to build and quicker to put to use.<\/p>\n<p>The reason such a channel makes sense is the talent exodus it answers. Former staff from Google and DeepMind, along with alumni of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for ventures only months old.<\/p>\n<p>Venture investors have\u00a0funnelled roughly $18.8bn into AI startups founded since the start of 2025, much of it chasing names recognisable from the labs that built today\u2019s frontier models.<\/p>\n<p>For a company watching senior researchers walk out to incorporate, an incubator is a way to convert a loss into an early-stage stake.<\/p>\n<p>The departures are not abstract. David Silver, a central figure behind AlphaGo, left DeepMind to found Ineffable Intelligence, a venture\u00a0backed by Sequoia and Nvidia at around $5.1bn\u00a0before it had shipped much of anything.<\/p>\n<p>A separate group of\u00a0ex-DeepMind founders raised $20m for Airspeed\u2019s AI sales agents. And the Nobel laureate\u00a0John Jumper left DeepMind for Anthropic, a reminder that the pull is not only toward founding companies but toward rivals as well.<\/p>\n<p>Set against that, an incubator reads as defensive and opportunistic at once. If the most ambitious people are going to leave regardless, Google would rather be the first investor and the first technical partner than a bystander reading about the funding round later.<\/p>\n<p>It is the same instinct behind the company\u2019s broader spending posture; DeepMind\u2019s chief executive has said Google will\u00a0outpace Microsoft on AI investment, and an alumni vehicle extends that ambition from infrastructure to founders.<\/p>\n<p>There is a tidy symmetry to the design. The people most likely to leave a frontier lab are the ones who understand its tools best, which makes them exactly the founders a frontier lab would most like to fund.<\/p>\n<p>An incubator that keeps alumni inside Google\u2019s orbit, with access to models and capital, lowers the cost of leaving while preserving the company\u2019s claim on the upside.<\/p>\n<p>Whether the former employees see it that way, or prefer the independence that drew them out in the first place, is the open question.<\/p>\n<p>The company is said to be developing the incubator, but its structure, the size of the fund behind it, the cheques it would write, and the launch timing remain undisclosed. Google has not commented publicly.<\/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-taps-its-alumni-network-for-a-new-ai-startup-incubator\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google is building an AI startup incubator that draws on its network of former employees, the so-called \u201cXooglers\u201d, according to Bloomberg. The pitch is neat in its logic: as some of the company\u2019s most capable people leave to start their own AI ventures, an incubator built around alumni keeps Google close to them, and close&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":735037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/2026\/04\/google-classified-ai-pentagon-drone-swarm-exit.avif","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-735036","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\/735036","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=735036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}