Top innovator Le Viet Quoc leaves Google to launch AI research startup Discovery Loop

Following the company’s announcement on Aug. 5, Quoc wrote on social media that he was excited to launch the venture with three longtime colleagues, Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat and Oriol Vinyals. Their broader goal, he said, is to automate machine learning, engineering and scientific research.

The startup focuses on building AI systems capable of autonomously tackling critical problems across various scientific disciplines by dramatically accelerating engineering research.

Image Caption: Founders from left to right: Oriol Vinyals, Sanjay Ghemawat, Jeff Dean, Le Viet Quoc. Photo: Discovery Loop

At the heart of their approach is solving the bottleneck of the "experimental loop"—a multi-step research cycle that involves proposing an experiment, executing it, analyzing the outcomes, and iteratively refining the methodology.

The team noted that traditional, manual experimental workflows struggle to scale, describing the current process across many fields as agonizingly slow and labor-intensive.

To overcome these barriers, Discovery Loop is deploying an automated platform powered by frontier AI models and massive computing infrastructure. By running thousands of experiments in parallel, the system aims to drastically shorten iteration times while elevating both the quantity and quality of scientific and engineering research.

TechCrunch reported that the venture has secured funding from several sources, including Google's parent company, Alphabet.

Sources familiar with the matter indicate that Dean will take on the role of CEO.

The founding team brings extraordinary academic weight to the project, featuring three of the most cited researchers in artificial intelligence and two of the most cited figures in distributed computing.

Dr. Le Viet Quoc speaks during an interview at an AI and semiconductor event in Vietnam, March 2025. Photo by Luu Quy

Born in 1982 in Thua Thien Hue, a province in central Vietnam, Quoc ranks among Google's most distinguished AI researchers. After earning his doctorate in computer science from Stanford University, he was named one of the world's top innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review for his contributions to global AI, and he frequently returns to Vietnam to share insights on technology development.

Co-founder Jeff Dean joined Google in 1999 as its 30th employee, helping build the core infrastructure underpinning Google Search. He later spearheaded Google's early AI research initiatives and played a central role in developing its multimodal Gemini models.

In an August 6 blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai paid tribute to Dean's legacy, writing that after an incredible 27-year journey at Google, Dean was ready to tackle a new challenge, adding that the company was excited to support his next chapter.

The high-profile departures highlight a broader shift inside Google's research division, which has seen several top scientists exit in recent months. In June, prominent researchers Noam Shazeer and John Jumper both resigned within days of each other to join competing AI firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic.