Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Editor: Yuan Xie is sleepy
DeepMind is becoming an entrepreneurial Huangpu in the AI industry, and has walked out of a large number of entrepreneurs engaged in AI enterprises.
Over the past few years, DeepMind, Google's AI research lab, has become a treasure trove of top AI talent.
Since Google acquired the London-based startup in 2014 for about $500 million, DeepMind has made many epoch-making breakthroughs in the AI world:
Created AI AlphaGo, which can defeat human champions in board games;
Created AI AlphaFold, which helps solve fundamental problems in structural biology;
Successful use of AI to control controlled nuclear fusion experiments.
The "Whampoa" of the AI Industry
Founded in 2010 by Demis Hassabis, Mustafa Suleyman and Shane Legg, the company employs about 1,200 people on both sides of the Atlantic, according to Linkedin.
More and more of these veteran employees are starting their own nonprofits and startups after quitting their jobs. Of the 14 businesses founded by former DeepMind employees combed by Insider, 11 were founded in 2020 or later.
These include Element, a new AI startup co-founded by original co-founder Suleyman and Linkedin billionaire Reid Hoffman, and Digonal, an urban planning consultancy for google veteran Andrew Eland.
Open Climate Fix, a nonprofit with former DeepMind employee Jack Kelly, is backed by Google, while former engineer Miljan Martic and Peter Toth's Web3 venture Kosen Labs are backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
1. Karl Moritz Hermann
Karl Moritz Hermann worked at DeepMind for 5 years before quitting to launch AI-driven personal assistant Saiga.
Start-up time: 2020
Supporters: Venture capital firms Seedcamp and Mosaic Ventures.
Specifics: Karl Moritz Hermann joined DeepMind when it acquired his last startup, Dark Blue Labs, in 2014.
He then worked for the company for more than five years, moving back and forth between London and Berlin as a research scientist.
"While I really enjoyed helping build a language research group at DeepMind, I always knew I wanted to go out again and start another company."
Now he's working in Berlin to develop AI-driven personal assistant Saiga with his co-founders Sophia H fling and Michael Fialik.
Hermann said the product is currently available in both the UK and Germany. By taking over the day-to-day management tasks Saiga can help users get more convenience out of their lives, such as "scheduling a dentist appointment, or booking a restaurant and vacation.".
2. Trevor Back
Trevor Back worked at DeepMind for nearly a decade before founding Shift Lab, and new venture projects are developing AI that can "build a far better tomorrow."
Start-up time: 2021
Supporter: Not disclosed.
Specific work: For almost a decade, Trevor Back, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, has continued to rise through the ranks of DeepMind, taking on a range of product manager positions before taking up senior positions in the company's science and business departments.
Last year, Back decided to fly solo and start a new company, Shift Lab, a new company that promises to develop AI for a "far better tomorrow."
Companies are still in stealth mode with little detail, but Back is hiring people everywhere, especially software, machine learning engineers, and research scientists.
3. Mustafa Suleyman
Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman teamed up with former colleagues Karen Simonyan and Linkedin billionaire Reid Hoffman.
Start-up time: 2022
Supported by: Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm.
Specific work: Mustafa Suleyman is one of the three co-founders of DeepMind, alongside Britons Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg.
After a spate of employee bullying allegations, Suleyman moved from DeepMind to vice president at parent company Google.
In the nearly a year since the allegations were first reported, Suleiman announced that he would leave Google to join venture capital firm Greylock Partners.
In a podcast interview, Suleyman was asked about his "radical management style."
"I had a bad mood in 2017 and 2018 and a couple of colleagues complained about my management style and I really screwed it up," he replied, adding that he was "very sorry for the impact and the damage caused by that time."
In early 2022, Suleyman revealed that he would start a new AI startup, Impaction, along with billionaire and Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman and former DeepMind researcher Karen Simonyan.
According to CNBC, the company's goal is to "develop artificial intelligence software products that make it easier for humans to communicate with computers."
4th Andrew Eland
Andrew Eland resigned from his senior position at DeepMind to found Diagonal, an urban planning consultancy.
Start-up time: 2019
Specifics: Diagonal, a data science consultancy focused on improving public spaces and urban infrastructure, works primarily with "urban design studios, planners, real estate developers, public institutions and research institutes," according to its website.
Andrew Eland, a former director of engineering at DeepMind, left in 2019 to start his own startup.
"We started our own businesses because we didn't see anybody else building the kind of urban data analytics software we imagined," he says.
The company's mission statement is to "improve the quality of life for urban dwellers".
5. Adji Bousso Dieng
Adji Bousso Dieng hopes to change the stereotype of her hometown through her nonprofit organization, The Africa I Know.
Specific work: Adji Bousso Dieng interned at DeepMind before working as a full-time research scientist at Google, calling the former "a very special place to do AI research."
"You can exchange ideas with anyone on any team over coffee, or jump up and write ideas with colleagues on a whiteboard." She said. "I learned that AI research can be great when people collaborate on a large scale."
She founded the nonprofit The Africa I Know to help improve science education on the continent, which she says she "missed" when she grew up in Khaolak, Senegal.
"TAIK's mission is to create a world where young Africans have the confidence and education they need to build their continent," she said.
6. Miljan Martic and Peter Toth
Miljan Martic and Peter Toth won the support of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz for their cryptocurrency venture Kosen Labs.
Supporters: Venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Framework Ventures.
Specific work: According to a medium article by co-founder and former DeepMind research engineer Peter Toth, Kosen Labs "aims to bring the benefits of advanced AI into the Web3 world."
Web3 has become an all-encompassing term that represents a vision of the future of the internet, encompassing everything from the metaverse to cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications.
Toth worked at DeepMind for about three years before deciding to work with colleague Miljan Martic on their own Web3 project, which won the support of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Toth wrote that Kosen Labs' first project will involve applying AI to cryptocurrency trading, adding that the application of AI in Web3 is "still in its infancy."
The company is also recruiting engineering talent.
7. Tiago Ramalho
Tiago Ramalho moved to Japan before setting up his own company, Recoverive AI.
Specifics: After three years at DeepMind, Ramalho briefly worked as a research scientist at Cogent Labs, a Japanese AI company, before starting his own startup, THE AI consultancy Recoverive.
"I decided to build a company on the other side of the world, but most importantly by connecting the ongoing AI innovations in the U.S. and Europe with industrial processes that can only be found in Japan," Ramalho said.
He added that the company is working with "big companies and developing innovative projects from the ground up".
For example, a medical clinic is using Recursive's expertise to help doctors predict the outcome of a patient's surgery.
8. Hugo Penedones
Hugo Penedones, a founding member of the AlphaFold team, resigned to start AI company Inductiva.
Specific work: Hugo Penedones is a founding member of AlphaFold's team, which led DeepMind's pioneering work on protein folding, a major challenge in the field of structural biology.
"I really enjoy applying machine learning to basic science problems and interacting with exceptional people with diverse backgrounds,"
His new venture in Portugal, Inductiva, faces a similar task: applying machine learning algorithms to advanced mathematical, physical and scientific problems.
Penedones said his mission with co-founders Luís Sarmento and Clara Gon alves is to "maximize positive real-world impact by accelerating basic scientific research."
9. Martin Schmid、Matej Moravcik和Rudolf Kadlec
Martin Schmid, Matej Moravcik and Rudolf Kadlec have teamed up to launch EquiLibre.
Supporters: Venture capital firms Credo Ventures, Rockaway Capital and Miton VC.
Specifics: First at IBM and then as an AI research scientist at DeepMind for most of his time, Martin Schmid moved to Prague with his former colleagues Matej Moravcik and Rudolf Kadlec to launch EquiLibre in early 2022.
In Schmid's words, EquiLibre is "building the next generation of algorithmic trading," a machine-driven financial service that can suggest financial transactions based on data entered into its system, or automate orders on behalf of users.
"While algorithmic trading still primarily uses fairly old models and methods, we plan to apply the most advanced machine learning we excel in this area," Schmid said.
Speaking about his decision to quit DeepMind, Schmid said: "It was really difficult to make this decision. I love my colleagues, but we'll regret it if we give up this opportunity."
10. Vedavyas Panneershelvam和Jim Gao
Vedavyas Panneershelvam and Jim Gao teamed up to start the energy company Phadira.
Supporters: Venture capital firm Flying Fish and Firstminute Capital.
Specific work: Jim Gao and Vedavyas Panneershelvam, one of DeepMind's most senior researchers, later resigned to form Phadira, a company dedicated to applying AI to major industrial projects.
Jim Gao led a team of 14 people to help Google reduce its data center cooling expenses by 40 percent, a major innovation that paved the way for Phadira's massive solutions.
According to the company's website, its technology has been used in industrial manufacturing projects and chemical engineering.
11. Jack Kelly
Jack Kelly was inspired while working at DeepMind to use AI to combat climate change.
Supported by: Google, Nvidia and the Allen Turing Institute
Specifics: Open Climate Fix, a London-based nonprofit whose official website says it is "entirely focused on helping the energy sector reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a massive scale."
"I learned a lot during my time at DeepMind," said co-founder Jack Kelly.
"One of the most important things I've learned is being more optimistic about the possibility of using machine learning to help mitigate climate change."
Before joining DeepMind, Kelly said he was "close to abandoning" the idea of using AI to help combat climate change.
But working under Jim Gao, the company's former team leader and now co-founder of energy startup Phadira, changed his mind and attitude. "Jim's enthusiasm and optimism are very contagious."
Since its launch three years ago, Open Climate Fix has won over supporters including Google, Nvidia and the Allen Turing Institute.
Ongoing projects include work on forecasting solar absorption, which is expected to make it a less risky investment project for businesses and governments. and an open source data collection project dedicated to improving the use of machine learning models in wind farms.
12. Tejas Kulkarni
Tejas Kulkarni decided to have Common Sense Machines "make a breakthrough beyond research papers."
Specific work: Common Sense Machines is training AI models to create realistic 3D simulations of the real world. Such simulations can then be programmed into automated machines, enabling them to carry out production line processes faster and more accurately.
"My time at DeepMind was one of the most creative periods of my life. I've experienced first-hand the power of smart people with strong beliefs and consistent incentives that can create scientific breakthroughs," said founder Tejas Kulkarni, who spent more than three years as a research scientist at DeepMind.
Asked why he decided to start his own business, he said he was driven to "make breakthroughs outside of research papers and create opportunities for scalable impact in the real world."
13. Darrel Adjei
Darrel Adjei is working with payments startup Fuse to "build a fintech multiplayer landscape."
Founding time: 2017
Supporters: Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, and Paul Buchheit, inventor of Gmail
Specific work: In 2021, former DeepMind and Google engineer Darrell Adjei were hired as founding engineers for payments company Fuse.
Fuse is a smart card that claims to "let you break up with any payment method immediately," challenging the dominance of payment apps like Splitwise and Venmo.
"DeepMind is a great learning environment, but I can't ignore the fact that all senior leadership has started companies in their early years, and I know that's my path," Adjei said.
The London-based fintech company was originally the brainchild of engineering graduate Lando Vago-ughes, who began implementing the idea while studying at the University of Southampton.
14. Demis Hassabis
DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis is still there, but Alphabet Labs was founded under Alphabet.
Founded: 2021
Supporter: Google's parent company Alphabet.
Specific job: Demis Hassabis is still in DeepMind, not counting as a former employee who started a solo business.
But he is also currently ceo of DeepMind AI Labs and Isomorphic Labs, a new venture he founded on the job and owned by Google's parent company Alphabet.
In a blog post from previous years, Hassabis said he wanted to "take an AI-first approach and reconstruct the entire drug invention process starting with the basic principles."
"One of the most important applications of AI I can think of is in the field of biological and medical research, a puzzle I've been passionate about solving for years," he wrote.
"Now is the time to accelerate this process with the focus and resources that Isomorphic Labs will bring."
While the details of the project have rarely appeared since then, the company is accepting applications from "biologists, medicinal chemists, biophysicists, clinicians, computational scientists and machine learning experts."
Resources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/former-deepmind-employees-who-founded-own-AI-startups-2022-3