TREE NEWS reports: At least 15 Google DeepMind staff and alumni met for breakfast in central London in September, with talk turning to how to fund an AI startup, as several former employees including Nando de Freitas and David Silva have founded their own companies and sought investor backing, some targeting hundreds of millions of dollars. The departures come as DeepMind shifts its AI power center from London to California, with some ex-staff citing a forced pivot to large language models as a reason for leaving.
DeepMind Staff Departures Draw VC Interest in New AI Startups
AI take
The notable signal here is not the individual spinouts but the pull of capital toward a specific talent pool: DeepMind alumni are being funded as a cohort, with some already seeking nine-figure rounds. That matters for London's standing as an AI hub, since the same shift moving DeepMind's center of gravity to California is also pushing founders and their backers outward. Whether this becomes a durable London startup cluster or a staging point before US relocation is the open question.
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