Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist, has left the company after 27 years to co-found a new startup named Discovery Loop. The company aims to automate the process of scientific research, from proposing experiments to evaluating results. Google announced on August 5, 2026, that it will serve as a founding investor and cloud partner for Discovery Loop.
Dean is accompanied in this new venture by three other senior AI researchers from Google. Sanjay Ghemawat, a Google Senior Fellow and long-time collaborator with Dean, is joining the startup. Oriol Vinyals, VP of research at Google DeepMind and a technical lead for Gemini, is also departing. Quoc Le, a co-founder of Google Brain and known for his work on AutoML-Zero, is the fourth key figure leaving Google. Discovery Loop is structured as a public benefit corporation.
The startup's stated goal is to automate the experimental loops of scientific research itself, initially focusing on machine learning research before expanding to other scientific fields. The founders envision a future where a small team can conduct scientific research and engineering tasks with greater speed and quality than larger teams currently achieve. They believe the next significant advancement for AI lies in moving beyond answering questions to making discoveries.
Dean's departure comes as part of a broader leadership shift within Google's AI division. Demis Hassabis is transitioning from CEO of Google DeepMind to a broader AI research role at Alphabet, Google's parent company, becoming chief scientist of Alphabet and chair of Google DeepMind. Koray Kavukcuoğlu, formerly CTO of DeepMind, will now lead the unit. Alphabet shares saw a decline of approximately 4% following these announcements.
Discovery Loop has secured backing from investors including Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, and Doerr Capital. Google's decision to invest in the new venture highlights a trend of established tech companies supporting spin-offs from their internal talent. This move also reflects a competitive environment where major technology firms are seeking to maintain their edge in AI development against smaller, specialized companies.
Dean, who joined Google in 1999 as its 30th employee, played a significant role in developing core search infrastructure and foundational AI research at the company. His departure, along with other prominent researchers, underscores the ongoing movement of top AI talent from large corporations to new ventures, driven by opportunities for innovation and company leadership. The founders have expressed a desire to accelerate the application of AI technologies to benefit society more rapidly.