Anthropic Acquires AI Drug Discovery Startup Coefficient Bio for $400 Million
Google DeepMind CEO runs dual workdays, claims 90% of modern AI breakthroughs originated from Google teams.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, in an April 2026 interview on the 20VC podcast, detailed the company's ferocious acceleration since its 2023 merger with Google Brain. He attributed success to combining DeepMind's research culture with Google's vast compute infrastructure, returning to a 'startup' mindset for faster shipping. Hassabis claims approximately 90% of the breakthroughs underpinning the modern AI industry—including the transformer architecture and AlphaFold—originated from Google Brain, Google Research, or DeepMind. This pace is backed by Alphabet's massive capital commitment, with 2026 capex guidance of $175B-$185B, nearly double 2025's $91.4B, limited only by supply constraints.
Hassabis also leads Isomorphic Labs, DeepMind's pharmaceutical AI spinoff, which raised $600M in 2025. He manages this as a 'second workday' beginning around 10pm after his DeepMind duties, emphasizing the project's personal importance. Isomorphic is preparing for human trials in oncology later in 2026. Operationally, the merged entity has accelerated its product cadence, with its open-weight Gemma 4 models now built on the same infrastructure as flagship Gemini 3, which reached 750M monthly active users by Q4 2025 and reportedly triggered an urgent response at OpenAI.
- Hassabis claims ~90% of foundational AI breakthroughs (transformer, RLHF, AlphaFold) came from Google Brain, Research, or DeepMind.
- Alphabet's 2026 capital expenditure is guided to $175B-$185B, a near-doubling from 2025, to fuel compute infrastructure.
- Hassabis runs drug discovery spinout Isomorphic Labs in a 'second workday' after 10pm, with human oncology trials expected soon.
Why It Matters
Reveals the immense scale and focused ambition driving Google's AI dominance, from foundational research to applied science in drug discovery.