DeepMind won a Nobel for AlphaFold. Then it broke up the team.

Less than a year ago, AlphaFold won Google DeepMind a Nobel Prize. “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. 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.