DeepMind's Top AI Minds Are Quietly Planning Their Own Startups

A group of 15 current and former Google DeepMind employees got together for breakfast in central London in September, according to a report from Wallstreetcn. DeepMind is Google's flagship AI research lab — the team behind breakthroughs that eventually reached products like Gemini. Almost immediately, the table talk shifted from catching up to business: how would they actually finance an AI startup, and what kind of company would it be?

Why does a breakfast matter? Because in the tech world, elite researchers leaving big companies is how entire industries get built. The people who wrote the foundational papers on today's AI are exactly the people investors are desperate to fund. When a dozen-plus of them sit in one room talking about money, it's often the informal first step before companies get founded, teams get hired away, and venture capital gets deployed.

For you, this matters in two directions. First, it hints at what's coming next: new AI tools for work, health, education or entertainment tend to come from exactly this kind of spin-out. Second, it signals a talent squeeze. Google's rivals — and Google itself — will have to compete harder to keep these people, and that competition shapes how fast AI products reach you and what they cost.

The catch is simple: this is a report about a conversation, not a company. No startup has been announced, no funding has been confirmed, and breakfast chatter often stays chatter. Treat it as a weather signal, not a forecast — a hint that the next big AI companies may be forming right now, quietly, over coffee.