Sanjay Ghemawat is leaving Google after 27 years to co-found Discovery Loop, an AI startup aimed at automating the scientific research process, alongside fellow Google veteran Jeff Dean and two other top researchers.
Ghemawat, a Google senior fellow, will join Dean, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le as co-founders of the new company, which is structured as a public benefit corporation. The announcement came August 5 as part of a broader reshuffling of Google’s AI leadership.
Discovery Loop will focus on automating the iterative cycle of proposing experiments, running them, evaluating results, and refining approaches—tasks that currently require large teams of scientists and engineers. According to the company’s mission, the goal is to enable small groups to conduct research and engineering at higher quality and speed than much larger teams can achieve today.
Ghemawat and Dean are the only two engineers in Google’s history to attain the Level 11 Senior Fellow distinction, Google’s highest technical rank. Their collaboration spans more than two decades, during which they co-created foundational Google infrastructure including the distributed systems that power the company’s search and data processing operations.
Google is backing the venture as a founding investor and will provide computing power for at least the first year. Additional backing comes from venture firms Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Discovery Loop is based in Palo Alto and operates as a lean team.
The departures are part of a broader AI leadership transition at Google. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping back from day-to-day operations to become chairman of DeepMind and Alphabet’s chief scientist, while Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind’s chief technology officer, is taking on responsibility for Gemini model development as senior vice president. The announcement triggered a roughly 4 percent decline in Alphabet shares.
In a commencement address at the University of Washington in June, Dean hinted at his interest in accelerating scientific discovery through software, telling graduates that “small groups of people can build things that have enormous impact in the world.” He did not disclose his plans at that time; the startup idea came together only in recent weeks, according to reporting from Wired.
The departure of two of Google’s most accomplished engineers marks a significant moment for the company as it navigates leadership changes across its AI operations. Jeff Dean’s exit follows a pattern of senior AI researchers launching independent ventures, reflecting broader shifts in how top talent is organizing around emerging research priorities.
Sources
- GeekWire — Detailed reporting on Discovery Loop’s founding team, mission, investors, and the broader Google AI leadership changes
- New York Times — Confirmation of the four co-founders, their roles at Google, and the announcement date
- Wired — Details on how the startup idea came together and Dean’s recent commencement address
- The Verge — Information on the broader Google AI leadership restructuring and Hassabis’s role transition
- Wikipedia — Confirmation of Ghemawat’s tenure at Google and his contributions to foundational systems
