Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Firm Deep Mind

Google is acquiring Deep Mind for reportedly  $400 million although some are reporting it may have been as high as $500 million.  Deep Mind is involved in the field of artificial intelligence. The news came out on a Sunday and many publications are covering the story.

Recode.net posted that,

DeepMind has only a landing page for a website where it describes its business as building learning algorithms for simulations, e-commerce and games. Profiles on LinkedIn indicate the company is about three years old.

Though DeepMind may not be a household name in tech, sources in the artificial intelligence community describe the company as a formidable AI player and say it has been aggressively recruiting in the space. One source said DeepMind has a team of at least 50 people and has secured more than $50 million in funding.

TheInformation.com included in their coverage that Google is setting up an ethics board as they want to make sure that the AI technology is not abused. Apparently Facebook was also interested in acquiring the company.

From the article:

Google, which is acquiring DeepMind Technologies, has agreed to establish an ethics board to ensure the artificial intelligence technology isn’t abused, according to two people familiar with the deal.

The unusual step of establishing the ethics committee comes as Google, which is paying more than $500 million to acquire the company, won the deal over Facebook, several people familiar with negotiations said. Facebook was in serious acquisition talks with DeepMind late last year, these people said, and it is unclear why talks fell apart.

Tech Crunch covered it as well,

Google will buy London-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind. The deal was confirmed to Re/code by Google. Re/code reports that the acquisition price was $400 million, but we’ve heard from a source that it was more. We’ve emailed Google and DeepMind for comment.

DeepMind was founded by neuroscientist Demis Hassabis, a former child prodigy in chess, Skype and Kazaa developer Jaan Tallin, and researcher Shane Legg.