Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis turned down a big offer from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook in 2013 to sell his AI startup to Larry Page’s Google, but a dinner at Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home was the turning point. Excerpt from Sebastian Mallaby’s upcoming book, according to the new Wall Street Journal endless machineMr. Hassabis deliberately tested Mr. Zuckerberg at the dinner. He steered the conversation from AI to virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D printing. Mr. Zuckerberg seemed equally excited about all of them. For Hassabis, that was a telling tale. “Facebook gave us more funding, but we wanted someone who could really understand why AI would be a bigger thing than others,” Hassabis said, according to an excerpt from WSJ.Meanwhile, Page made his pitch at Elon Musk’s birthday party a few months ago. He argued that Hassabis could spend the best part of his career building the company, or he could use Google’s existing infrastructure to tackle artificial general intelligence head-on. Hassabis found it difficult to refute this logic.
Mr. Hassabis used Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg knew it.
It turns out that Facebook’s courtship was primarily a negotiation tactic. Hassabis and co-founder Mustafa Suleiman used Zuckerberg’s interest to pressure Google to commit sooner. A poker player by nature, Suleiman called out DeepMind’s billionaire backers Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Solina Chow. Even though these investors did not have backing in a binding sense.Zuckerberg later acknowledged the play. In an interview with South Park Commons, Mehta said Hassabis has done a “very good job” in steering Facebook away from Google and said he respects the move.
Deal completed after Facebook dismissed concerns about AI safety
Beyond the vision, there was another deal breaker. When Suleiman raised the need for an independent AI safety oversight board, Facebook brushed it off. Google is taking it seriously, with then-CFO Patrick Pichette likening AI to nuclear power, which can have both devastating harm and transformative benefits.In January 2014, Google acquired DeepMind for $650 million. This amount seems almost absurdly low today. Zuckerberg abandoned that idea and instead hired deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun to build Facebook’s AI lab from scratch.
