Jeff Dean, one of Google’s longest-serving engineers and a central figure in the company’s artificial intelligence and computing infrastructure, has left the technology giant after 27 years to co-found a new AI startup called Discovery Loop.
Dean, who served as chief scientist across Google DeepMind and Google Research, is launching the company alongside longtime collaborator Sanjay Ghemawat and senior AI researchers Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le. Discovery Loop has been established as a public benefit corporation focused on using AI to automate machine learning, science and engineering.
Dean joined Google in 1999, when the company had about 25 employees. His departure marks the end of a tenure spanning Google’s expansion from an early-stage search company into a global technology business with products across search, advertising, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
During his time at Google, Dean worked on several of the company’s foundational technologies. Alongside Ghemawat, he helped develop distributed computing systems including MapReduce and Bigtable. His work also covered Google Search infrastructure, advertising systems, Google News and Google Translate.
Dean later played a significant role in Google’s shift towards artificial intelligence. He helped establish Google Brain in 2011 and contributed to technologies and research spanning TensorFlow, machine learning infrastructure, neural networks, large language models and AI hardware.
More recently, Dean and Vinyals served as technical leads for Google’s Gemini effort, working on multiple generations of the company’s AI models.
In a farewell message to Google employees, Dean reflected on the company’s growth and his work across different generations of its technology. He said his decision to leave followed discussions with Ghemawat, Vinyals and Le about how AI could be used to accelerate scientific discovery through automated experimental loops.
Discovery Loop plans to develop AI systems capable of automating parts of the research process. The company intends to initially apply its approach to machine learning before expanding into areas including biology, drug discovery, materials science and chip design.
The proposed model involves AI systems helping to propose, execute and analyse experiments, potentially allowing multiple research cycles to run in parallel rather than relying entirely on sequential human-led experimentation.
While Dean and his co-founders are leaving Google, the new venture will retain ties with the company. Alphabet is supporting Discovery Loop as a founding investor, while Google will also work with the startup as a Cloud partner.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged Dean and Ghemawat’s contribution to the company, highlighting their involvement in major technology transitions spanning early search infrastructure and modern AI.
Dean’s departure comes at a time when competition for experienced AI researchers and engineers remains high across technology companies and startups. The growth of generative AI has also increased investment in companies looking to apply AI beyond consumer-facing assistants and content generation.
Discovery Loop’s focus places the startup within a growing area of AI research centred on scientific discovery. Technology companies and research labs are increasingly exploring the use of AI in fields such as drug development, biology, materials research and semiconductor design.
Dean’s move also brings together four researchers with longstanding experience across Google’s computing and AI operations. While Discovery Loop has outlined an ambitious research agenda, the company is still at an early stage and has not disclosed timelines for commercial products.
For Dean, the move shifts his focus from building AI and computing systems inside Google to applying automated AI research loops through an independent company, while maintaining an investment and infrastructure relationship with his former employer.
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