Google DeepMind dismantles Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold team in strategic shift to Gemini

Google DeepMind dismantles Nobel-winning AlphaFold team in strategy shift

Google DeepMind has dismantled the team behind AlphaFold, its Nobel Prize-winning AI system for predicting protein structures, as the company overhauls the research strategy that made it one of the world's leading AI laboratories. The majority of the original authors of the AlphaFold papers have been reassigned over the past year, according to an FT analysis of recent job moves and people familiar with the matter. DeepMind confirmed the staffers have moved internally to projects built around Google's Gemini large language model, as well as areas including enzyme design, nuclear fusion and genomics. Others have relocated to Alphabet's drug-discovery company Isomorphic Labs. Nearly a quarter of the full-time Google DeepMind authors of the original AlphaFold papers have left the company altogether. The reshuffle reflects a significant change in DeepMind's scientific strategy since the rise of large language models. "Our strategy over the last nine years has been to focus on grand challenges . . . a concrete goal every project is focused on," said Pushmeet Kohli, vice-president of research at Google DeepMind, where he founded and leads the AI for Science team. "The strategy has evolved." He said rather than simply organising researchers around single scientific problems such as protein folding, the AI lab is now also focused on building Gemini-powered systems that can assist scientists -- and eventually automate parts of the scientific process -- while competing with OpenAI and Anthropic to develop frontier AI agents. AlphaFold, which DeepMind began developing in 2018, transformed biological research by using AI to predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins, a breakthrough that earned John Jumper, vice-president, engineering fellow, and DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis, a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. The project became the defining example of DeepMind's strategy of pursuing long-term scientific breakthroughs through dedicated research teams. Earlier this year, Jumper and fellow AlphaFold researcher Jonas Adler moved to Google's internal "Code Strike" team, a group assembled to improve the company's AI coding capabilities as it seeks to catch Anthropic and OpenAI. Last month, Jumper announced he was leaving for Anthropic, where he will be joined by Adler and AlphaFold colleague Alexander Pritzel. A DeepMind employee, who asked not to be named, said all three had been "instrumental, important, core members" of the company and that their departures had sparked surprise internally. DeepMind said the movement of researchers reflected its evolving scientific priorities. "We are incredibly proud of our scientific heritage and the global impact of AlphaFold, which inspired the launch of Isomorphic Labs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery," the company said. Isomorphic Labs was spun out of DeepMind in 2021 to commercialise AlphaFold's scientific breakthroughs. It has since struck partnerships with pharmaceutical companies including Novartis and Eli Lilly as it seeks to use AI to speed drug discovery. The reorganisation also reflects a broader shift across the AI industry, as frontier labs increasingly view large language models not simply as chatbots but as tools capable of accelerating scientific research. Anthropic this year launched Claude Science, a version of its AI assistant designed to support research in biology and drug discovery. Competition for the small pool of researchers capable of building frontier AI systems has intensified alongside that strategic shift, with companies aggressively recruiting top scientists and engineers. "[AI researchers] want to work for a lab that is at the frontier and [not] have to play a catch-up game," Mark Chen, OpenAI's head of research, told the FT earlier this year. "It's much more exciting for a researcher to just be at the frontier, trying to push the next paradigm, rather than all this pressure to replicate some model that is close to the frontier," he added.

Google shuts down its Nobel-prize winning AlphaFold project as it focuses on Gemini - Engadget

It has already reassigned some members of the DeepMind project, while others have already left the company. The award-winning team behind Google DeepMind's AlphaFold program is no more, according to Financial Times. Google has reassigned most of the team's key members and the original authors of its papers, while a few others have already left the company. AlphaFold is an AI program that can accurately predict three-dimensional structures of proteins from their amino acid sequences in minutes instead of years. It's now being used to accelerate drug discovery, develop vaccines and understand the structural changes in proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. DeepMind started developing AlphaFold in 2018. In 2020, it was recognized as a solution to humanity's 50-year-old "protein folding problem," which sought to answer how amino acids automatically fold into complex 3D shapes. Those shapes determine the biological role of a protein. Scientists had identified the structures of roughly 170,000 proteins over the past 50 years, using tools and techniques like X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance. The AlphaFold team took information from those previous work and then fed it to their AI to train AlphaFold. In 2021, Nature published the papers with AlphaFold's methodology and the structure predictions of the entire human proteome, or the complete set of proteins expressed by our species. DeepMind then launched the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, giving researchers free access to over 200 million protein structure predictions. In 2024, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who was a staff research scientist when the project began and who eventually became a VP and engineering fellow, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold. Jumper announced in June that he was leaving DeepMind to join Anthropic. A couple of his colleagues jumped ship to Anthropic, as well. DeepMind has confirmed to the Times that it also moved staff members internally to Gemini-focused projects. Other former staff members were reassigned to Alphabet's drug-discovery company Isomorphic Labs, which is a DeepMind spin-off. As the Times notes, this represents Google's decision to put more and more of its resources into developing Gemini. "Our strategy over the last nine years has been to focus on grand challenges... a concrete goal every project is focused on," said Pushmeet Kohli, the VP of research at Google DeepMind. "The strategy has evolved."

DeepMind dismantles its Nobel-winning AlphaFold team

Less than a year after AlphaFold won it a Nobel Prize, Google DeepMind has quietly broken up the team behind it. Most of the original authors have been reassigned, nearly a quarter have left, and the stars are now at Anthropic. It marks a turn away from the deep-science bets that made DeepMind's name, toward the Gemini-powered "AI scientist" race. Less than a year ago, AlphaFold won Google DeepMind a Nobel Prize. Now DeepMind has taken the team that built it apart. The lab has reassigned most of the original AlphaFold-paper authors over the past year, the Financial Times reported. Nearly a quarter of them have left the company altogether. DeepMind confirmed the moves, and is folding the work into a wider push around Gemini. From one grand challenge to the 'AI scientist' AlphaFold was the purest expression of DeepMind's old strategy: point a dedicated team at one hard problem and solve it. It cracked the 50-year protein-folding problem, Engadget noted, predicting 3D protein shapes in minutes. It now underpins drug discovery and disease research worldwide. That model is now on the way out. "Our strategy over the last nine years has been to focus on grand challenges," DeepMind research VP Pushmeet Kohli told the FT. "The strategy has evolved." Instead of one team per problem, the lab is now building Gemini-powered systems meant to assist scientists and automate parts of research itself. Former AlphaFold staff have scattered. Some moved to Gemini projects, others to enzyme design, nuclear fusion and genomics, The Decoder reported. A few went to Isomorphic Labs, the Alphabet drug-discovery spinout that AlphaFold inspired. The stars went to Anthropic The most painful losses walked out entirely. John Jumper, who shared the 2024 Nobel with DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, left for Anthropic in June. Two core AlphaFold researchers, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, followed him. One DeepMind employee told the FT the three were "instrumental, important, core members" whose exits "sparked surprise internally." They are now at a rival that just launched Claude Science, a workbench built for the exact biology and drug-discovery work AlphaFold pioneered. Why it matters The kindest reading is that AlphaFold simply did its job. It solved its problem, spun off a company, and freed its people for the next thing. DeepMind says it remains "incredibly proud" of the work. The harder reading is what the shift signals. The lab most defined by deep science is reorganising around the same language-model race as everyone else. Worse, it is losing the talent that made its name to the rivals driving that race. Betting on an "AI scientist" is a bigger, vaguer goal than folding a protein. Whether it pays off like AlphaFold did is an open question.

Google Reshuffles Nobel-Winning DeepMind AI Team | PYMNTS.com

That's according to a report Wednesday (July 29) from the Financial Times (FT), which frames the move as Google overhauling a research strategy that made DeepMind one of the top AI laboratories. Most of the original authors of the AlphaFold papers have been reassigned in the last year, the report said, citing an FT analysis of recent job moves and sources familiar with the matter. The company confirmed that the employees have moved to projects dealing with Google's Gemini large language model, plus areas like enzyme design, nuclear fusion and genomics, the FT added. Others have moved to Google's Isomorphic Labs. Almost a quarter of the full-time Google DeepMind authors of the original AlphaFold papers have simply left the company. The FT says this marks a major shift in DeepMind's scientific strategy following the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) large language models. "Our strategy over the last nine years has been to focus on grand challenges ... a concrete goal every project is focused on," said Pushmeet Kohli, vice-president of research at Google DeepMind, and founder/head of the AI for Science team. "The strategy has evolved." Rather than focusing on single scientific problems, Kohli told the FT, DeepMind is now also concentrating on developing Gemini-powered systems that can help scientists -- and someday automate parts of the scientific process -- while competing with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to build frontier AI agents. The news comes weeks after John Jumper, one of the Nobel Prize-winning scientists behind Alpha Fold, announced he was leaving the company to join Anthropic. In other Google AI news, PYMNTS wrote this week about new research at the company showing that workers in predominantly physical and manual roles, such as auto technicians and industrial mechanics, are using conversational AI for real-time diagnostics, troubleshooting and on-the-job learning. The company's research also found that workplace AI now touches 68% of jobs, representing 90% of employment in the U.S. However, within any single job, employees use it for about 21% of their tasks on average. "Blue-collar workers tend to be using a lot of what we call multimodal AI, which is AI with images and video," Scott Strand, head of strategic operations and special projects for technology and society at Google, told Axios last week.