Google loses about $186 billion after four top AI researchers leave

WASHINGTON: Alphabet, Google’s parent company, lost about $186 billion in market value after shares fell nearly 4% following the departure of four prominent artificial intelligence researchers.

According to a Barchart report, Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean left the company after 27 years, while three other senior AI researchers — Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le — also departed. The four researchers have reportedly decided to launch a new company called Discovery Loop.

Alphabet shares fell 4.03% to close at $362.43 on August 5. With about 12.23 billion shares outstanding, the decline wiped out roughly $186 billion from the company’s market capitalisation.

However, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the researchers’ departure did not mean the end of their relationship with Google. He said Google would remain a founding investor in Discovery Loop and would also provide the new company with Google Cloud services.

Discovery Loop is being established as a public benefit corporation focused on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific and engineering research. The company aims to develop AI systems capable of automating large-scale experiments and speeding up the research and innovation process.

The departures come as Google is making major investments to strengthen its position in the rapidly evolving AI sector, raising questions among investors about the company’s AI strategy and future direction.