2010
Hassabis says that when DeepMind started in 2010 he did not pay himself for a couple of years because they could not raise money.
“I remember when we were starting out back in 2010, you know, I didn't even pay myself for a couple of years”
Topic
Google DeepMind
21 facts from 9 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2010s
David Luan says self-play, a technique where a model plays against itself, was popularized by DeepMind in the mid-2010s when its system beat humans at Go.
“a technique that really DeepMind made popular in the mid twenty tens when they beat humans at playing Go.”
2010
DeepMind was founded in 2010 by Demis Hassabis, along with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.
“DeepMind was founded in 2010 by a neuroscience PhD named Demis Hassabis.”
2010
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund led DeepMind's seed round of about $2 million.
“Founders Fund leads DeepMind's seed round of about $2 million.”
2014
Google acquired DeepMind about a year after it acquired the AlexNet team's startup.
“So about a year later, Google also acquires DeepMind, famously.”
2014
Google acquired DeepMind for $550 million and the deal set up an independent oversight board.
“$550 million U.S. There's an independent oversight board that is set up to make sure that the mission and goals of DeepMind are actually being followed.”
2017
DeepMind's AlphaGo beat the world champion at Go, and its AlphaGo Zero version learned by playing against itself without human game data.
“7 years ago, uh, you know, DeepMind, uh, as part of Google, uh, produced the AlphaGo model, which was able to beat the world champion in Go”
2023
Pichai says Google's next state-of-the-art model, called Gemini, was being built by its new combined unit, Google DeepMind.
“the next state-of-the-art model we are working on, you know, with our new combined unit, Google Deep Mind is called Gemini.”
2023
In 2023 Sundar Pichai merged Google Brain and DeepMind into a single unit called Google DeepMind.
“We're merging Brain and DeepMind into one entity called Google DeepMind.”
2024
Hassabis says DeepMind's AlphaProof system earned a silver-medal level result on maths Olympiad problems the previous year.
“Alpha proof last year, our system got, you know, silver medal in that.”
2025
Phil Fersht says the CEO of Google DeepMind argued that creative, non-engineer people can now help develop code.
“But he was saying how, um, the new way to develop code is inviting creatives and people with heuristic creative skills to develop the code.”
Undated
The original reinforcement learning from human feedback paper was a collaboration between DeepMind and OpenAI, which Dario Amodei said he drove while at OpenAI.
“I drove the original RL from Human Feedback paper was considered safety work, and this ended up being a collaboration between DeepMind and OpenAI”
Undated
Hassabis describes Veo 3 as generating about eight seconds of consistent video that is hard to fault at a glance.
“Whatever it is, eight seconds of consistent video that, by eye, at least, you know, at a glance, is quite hard to distinguish what the issues are.”
Undated
Hassabis describes AlphaEvolve as combining large language models that propose solutions with evolutionary computing that searches for novel ones.
“So LLMs are kind of proposing some possible solutions, and then you do. You use evolutionary computing on top to to to find some novel part of the of the search space.”
Undated
Hassabis says Google DeepMind's neural-network weather systems outperform traditional fluid-dynamics weather models that run on supercomputers.
“We've created the the best weather prediction systems in the world, and they're better than traditional fluid dynamics sort of systems”
Undated
Hassabis says Google DeepMind has done work with Commonwealth Fusion on AI for plasma containment in fusion reactors.
“We've done lots of work on that with Commonwealth Fusion and also, uh, one could imagine reactor design”
Undated
Hassabis says a new major Gemini version takes roughly six months for a full training run and productization.
“maybe it takes, you know, roughly six months or something to to do a new kind of full run and the full productization of a new version”
Undated
Hassabis says the smaller Gemini models, Flash and Flashlight, are often distilled from the largest Pro model.
“we also have different sizes pro and flash and flashlight that are often distilled from the biggest ones, you know, the flash model from the pro model.”
Undated
Hassabis says Google built a version of its Gemma model, called DolphinGemma, trained on dolphin and whale sounds.
“A version of our system was trained on dolphin and whale sounds.”
Undated
Pereyra did reinforcement learning research while at DeepMind.
“when I was at DeepMind, a lot of the RL research I did was that.”
Undated
Alan Chan recalled a Google DeepMind paper using a mathematics competition in which a significant share of agents, about 16 to 30 percent by his uncertain recollection, tried to whistleblow.
“I think it was, like, 30% of agents actually tried to whistleblow, or s maybe it was 16, but, like, some, like, significant percentage.”
Episodes
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- 23 Jul 2025#475 – Demis Hassabis: Future of AI, Simulating Reality, Physics and Video Games2h 34m
- 17 Apr 2025Will AI Agents Replace Your Entire Workforce in 2025? | CXOTalk #87652m
- 30 May 2023Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on Leadership, AI, and Big Tech30m
- 21 Aug 2025Amazon is betting on agents to win the AI race59m
- 26 Jun 2024Dario Amodei CEO of Anthropic: Claude, New models, AI safety and Economic impact1h 11m
- 5 Dec 2025Scaling Legal AI and Building Next-Generation Law Firms with Harvey Co-Founder and President Gabe Pereyra44m
- 14 Oct 2026Governing AI Agents: Alan Chan of GovAI on Monitoring, Agent IDs, Rogue Agents & Preparing for RSI2h 17m