Google傳奇工程師Jeff Dean在任職近27年後，與長期合作夥伴Sanjay Ghemawat及另外兩位頂尖AI科學家Oriol Vinyals和Quoc Le共同離開Google，創辦了一家名為Discovery Loop的新公司。Dean在Y Combinator的Startup School活動上向6,000名創業者發表演說時，暗示了他對「自動化科學方法」的興趣——透過AI自動提出實驗、執行實驗、評估結果，並在數千次迴圈中實現突破性進展。這四位共同創辦人不僅是長年同事，更是私交甚篤的好友，他們在短短數週內便決定攜手創業。

Discovery Loop的核心理念是將AI從輔助研究的工具，轉變為能夠自主進行科學與工程研究的「研究者」。公司計畫首先將自動化實驗迴圈應用於改進自身的機器學習演算法，再將這些改良後的AI系統推廣至晶片設計、生物學、藥物開發及材料設計等多個領域。共同創辦人Quoc Le對自動化機器學習的前景尤為興奮，認為有可能因此發現全新的Transformer架構。團隊的終極目標是深度自動化整個發現流程，讓少數人即可借助Discovery Loop的技術，超越全球最大研究機構的創新能力。

在融資方面，團隊以簡單的簡報向創投募資，獲得了Khosla Ventures和Radical Ventures等機構的投資，具體金額和估值未公開。知名創投家Vinod Khosla表示，憑這個團隊的陣容，甚至不需要知道他們要做什麼就願意投資。離開Google的談判過程較為艱難，Alphabet執行長Sundar Pichai曾多次試圖挽留。最終Google不僅給予祝福，還進行了投資並承諾提供第一年的算力支持。目前Discovery Loop尚未開始招聘或租用辦公空間，Dean略顯靦腆地確認自己將擔任執行長。

Jeff Dean, a legendary Google engineer of nearly 27 years, has departed the company along with Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le to co-found Discovery Loop, a startup focused on automating the scientific method using AI. Dean hinted at his vision during a talk at Y Combinator's Startup School, describing a system that could autonomously propose experiments, execute them, evaluate results, and iterate thousands of times to achieve breakthroughs. The four co-founders, who are both longtime colleagues and close friends, conceived the idea just weeks before the announcement and quickly aligned around the shared conviction that AI is ready to automate scientific and engineering discovery loops.

Discovery Loop plans to be its own first customer, initially directing its automated experiment loops toward improving its own machine learning algorithms. The enhanced software will then serve as the foundation for tackling challenges in chip design, biology, drug discovery, and materials science. Co-founder Quoc Le expressed particular excitement about the possibility of discovering entirely new transformer architectures through automated ML research. The team's long-term ambition is to deeply automate the process of generating and testing new ideas, potentially enabling small teams to out-innovate the world's largest research organizations by leveraging Discovery Loop's technology.

The startup secured funding from Khosla Ventures, Radical Ventures, and several other firms, though the founders declined to disclose the amount or valuation. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who met the team secretly on a Saturday to avoid tipping off the market, called them the ultimate superstar team and praised their vision of making AI the researcher rather than merely a research tool. Negotiating their departure from Google proved difficult, with CEO Sundar Pichai making multiple attempts to retain them, but Google ultimately invested in Discovery Loop and agreed to provide cloud computing resources for the first year. The company, structured as a public benefit corporation, has yet to hire staff or secure office space, and Dean confirmed—somewhat sheepishly—that he will serve as CEO.