Google has announced the formation of a new unit, Google DeepMind, consisting of the teams from DeepMind and Google Brain. DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500 million and has since worked collaboratively with Google Brain, creating advancements in AI such as beating human professional Go players and predicting the structures of complex proteins. Google DeepMind will bring together the two world-class teams to create the next generation of AI products and breakthroughs, with the aim of doing so in a responsible way. The new unit will be overseen by a scientific board led by VP of research at DeepMind, Koray Kavukcuoglu, with Eli Collins and Zoubin Ghahramani joining as VP of product and a member of the research leadership team, respectively.

Google Brain co-founder Jeff Dean will take on the elevated role of chief scientist for both Google Research and Google DeepMind, reporting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google Research will continue as a separate unit and concentrate on core computer science advancements.

DeepMind and Alphabet had some disagreements regarding autonomy. DeepMind sought an independent legal structure for its research. DeepMind has also struggled to break even with its growing expenses, but is now profitable, reporting a modest £44 million profit in 2020, up from a £477 million loss in 2019. Its revenue is almost entirely dependent on licensing its technologies to other Alphabet groups, such as Waymo.

As Google looks to beat back rivals such as Microsoft and OpenAI in the race for revenue-generating AI, DeepMind has taken on new importance within Alphabet. Google is reportedly investing significant resources into Magi, a collection of new search features with AI capabilities, and developing software to compete with OpenAI known as Gemini. Alphabet’s recent attempts to promote AI products like the chatbot Bard not been well received leading to a significant drop in its shares. In a blog post, Pichai wrote that Google had been an “AI-first company” since 2016, seeing AI as the most significant way to deliver on their mission.