Demis Hassabis mentions that Google DeepMind needed to revert to its startup origins following the Brain merger.

      In summary: Demis Hassabis, during an appearance on the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings in early April 2026, explained how Google DeepMind has increased its pace in the last two to three years by integrating Google Brain's computing power with DeepMind's research ethos and reverting to what he termed a “startup or entrepreneurial” approach. He also mentioned that he manages Isomorphic Labs, the group's pharmaceutical AI offshoot, during a “second workday” starting around 10pm, in preparation for anticipated human trials in oncology later this year.

      Gathering the components

      The formal merger of Google DeepMind with Google Brain was finalized in 2023. Hassabis characterized the subsequent period as one of intentional acceleration: coordinating talent across the company, consolidating efforts toward a common goal, accessing large-scale computing resources that DeepMind previously lacked, and promoting what he described as “relentless sort of focus and pace.” He asserted that this transformation involved a cultural shift as well as a structural one: the organization needed to revert to its “startup or entrepreneurial” origins, being scrappier, faster, and capable of quickly delivering products. He noted that the current competitive landscape was “ferocious,” with long-standing employees stating it was the most intense environment they had experienced in the technology sector.

      Hassabis mentioned that he communicates with Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, “every day,” highlighting how Google DeepMind has become integral to Alphabet's operational product and research strategy. This close relationship is complemented by significant capital investment. Google’s infrastructure expansion, partly driven by custom chip partnerships with companies like Broadcom, is crucial to this positioning: Alphabet allocated $91.4 billion for capital expenditure in 2025 and has forecasted between $175 billion and $185 billion for 2026, representing nearly double that amount, with supply constraints identified as the main limiting factor rather than capital availability.

      The 90% assertion

      One of Hassabis’s bolder claims during the podcast was regarding DeepMind's impact on AI history. He stated that about 90% of the breakthroughs that have shaped the modern AI industry originated from either Google Brain, Google Research, or DeepMind. This assertion aligns with the academic record of foundational developments, including the transformer architecture introduced by Google Brain in 2017, early advancements in reinforcement learning from human feedback, and deep reinforcement learning methods established at DeepMind. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Hassabis and John Jumper, shared with David Baker for the AlphaFold protein-folding system, is the most publicly acknowledged of these accomplishments. Whether the 90% figure accurately represents a percentage is open to interpretation, especially as the industry has diversified significantly since those early papers. The framing serves as much as a positioning statement as it does a historical assertion.

      The operational impact of that legacy has led to a significantly quicker product release cycle. Google’s open-weight model initiative, with the latest Gemma 4, now launches models derived from the same research and training framework as Gemini 3, bridging the gap between leading-edge research and open-source developments that previously existed. By the end of the fourth quarter in 2025, Gemini had approximately 750 million monthly active users, and reports indicated that Gemini 3 triggered an urgent internal response from OpenAI upon its release in November of that year.

      The second workday

      In addition to his role at Google DeepMind, Hassabis also oversees Isomorphic Labs, the pharmaceutical AI spin-off that DeepMind created in 2021. He elaborated on his work schedule in the 20VC discussion: a primary workday at DeepMind followed by a “second workday” starting around 10pm devoted to Isomorphic’s drug discovery initiative. This dual focus reflects his belief that utilizing AI for drug discovery is both his most significant long-term goal and a project that necessitates ongoing personal engagement rather than delegation.

      Isomorphic secured $600 million in funding in April 2025 and has partnership agreements with Eli Lilly and Novartis, totaling potential milestone values of up to $3 billion. In February 2026, the company launched IsoDDE, a drug design tool that Isomorphic claims improves the accuracy of AlphaFold 3 for generating drug candidates. Human clinical trials for oncology are anticipated later in 2026. The competitive landscape in AI-powered drug discovery is becoming increasingly fierce: Anthropic’s acquisition of Coefficient Bio for around $400 million in April 2026, a stealth startup founded by former computational biology researchers from Genentech, indicates that general-purpose AI companies are now considering pharmaceutical discovery as a legitimate product category, not just a showcase of model capabilities.

      The competitive context

      The 20VC podcast discussion, as well as Sebastian Mallaby’s biography of Hassabis, "The Infinity Machine," released on March 31, 2026, after over 30 hours of interviews, portrays a researcher who has entered a commercially crucial phase