Alphabet’s Google and DeepMind Join Forces to Chase OpenAIRead Now

March 17, 2022 10:05 AM PDT

South by Southwest, the annual tech and arts festival in Austin, Tex., kicked off this year against the backdrop of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, record inflation, skyrocketing gas prices and a two-year pandemic hangover. It also coincided with a sudden dip in the price of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens.

But all the bad news didn’t stop people from lining up around the block to get into a Doodles pop-up. Doodles, a collection of 10,000 pastel-colored NFTs that sold out within a few minutes of their release last fall, were to SXSW 2022 what the launch of Twitter or Foursquare was in festivals past: an occasion for true believers to show their unfettered excitement about something most people have never heard of and don’t understand.

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From left, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Google Brain chief Jeff Dean. Photos by Getty, Bloomberg
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Alphabet’s Google and DeepMind Pause Grudges, Join Forces to Chase OpenAI
OpenAI’s success in overtaking Google with an artificial intelligence–powered chatbot has achieved what seemed impossible in the past: It has forced the two AI research teams within Google’s parent, Alphabet, to overcome years of intense rivalry to work together.
Art by Clark Miller.
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At a catch-up coffee a few weeks ago, a founder friend asked me, “What AI thing should we build?” It was the third time that week a founder had asked me the same question.
Block chairman and co founder Jack Dorsey. Photo by Getty
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Fintechs were supposed to transform banking by making it dead simple for users to open savings accounts or pay their bills.
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Orlando Bravo, co-founder of Thoma Bravo LLC. Photo by Bloomberg.
DEALS enterprise
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In early March, Ken DeLeon, founder of DeLeon Realty, a Silicon Valley–based brokerage that sold more than $1 billion in homes in 2021, called one of his venture capitalist clients to discuss the purchase of a $20 million–plus megamansion.