DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis was an early investor in Anthropic

In short: Financial Times reports that Demis Hassabis, who founded Google DeepMind, quietly invested early in Anthropic.

What's going on

Demis Hassabis, the founder of Google DeepMind, was an early “angel investor” in Anthropic, according to people familiar with the matter. An angel investor is someone who puts their own money into a company early on, before it is widely known.

Anthropic is now one of the best-known AI start-ups and a competitor to other major AI labs. Google has also invested billions of dollars separately in Anthropic through a business partnership tied to Google’s cloud services.

This news fits a bigger pattern. Many former DeepMind researchers have started their own companies since 2021, and these companies have raised at least $14 billion, according to PitchBook and Dealroom. Examples named in the report include Isomorphic Labs, which was also founded by Hassabis, and Ineffable Intelligence, founded by longtime collaborator David Silver.

The report also says Hassabis has invested in other businesses started by former colleagues, including Inflection AI, launched by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman before he joined Microsoft in 2024. At the same time, senior DeepMind leaders have taken bigger roles inside Google, including Koray Kavukcuoglu as Google’s chief AI architect and Pushmeet Kohli as chief scientist at Google Cloud.

What to watch

If more DeepMind alumni keep launching companies, investors may treat “ex-DeepMind” like a strong reference on a resume. It is also worth watching how Google manages possible conflicts when its top AI leader has personal investments across the same industry.

Source: Financial Times