Top AI talent increasingly wants to work on intellectually stimulating research (like science) rather than product features, forcing them out of big tech.
The discussion highlights that senior AI researchers are leaving Google to pursue scientific discovery because they are deprioritized in favor of commercial products like coding and chat. ✦ AI generated
Rory · 20VC · 2026-08-13 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 35:05
“So, so let me provide some context. ... How significant is it honestly to Google?”
I think what's happening is you know every dollar of every piece of compute that you give to um Google cloud turns into 30% operating margins... Every bit of compute that you give to drug discovery... turns into a longshot five or seven year moonshot... At some level there's a desire to focus full-time on that... What are you going to do with your late 50s in life?
verbatim transcript · starts at 35:05
35:05CEO of a2 or three trillion dollar market cap public company and have the stock go down by a couple hundred billion dollars. If you want to increase your sense of self-importance and self worth that that was a good moment that that was what the therapists call validation at a high level, right? Let's move on from that. I actually think Jason genuine comment here. Jason's take is the correct one. Don't like we can
35:27analyze what it means for Google, but think about it. If you're Jeffy and you've done 27 years at Google, you've made gazillions of dollars, right? The mission at Google to around the era, like it or not, is allocate a lot of the compute to the Google cloud business to just be a hyperscaler. Boring as [ __ ] to you. allocate more of that the remaining compute to build a competitive frontier
35:49model mainly focused on the big things of consumer because that's what they care about and coding because that's what they care about at this point after 27 years fairly boring to you and get some time to do a little bit of medical discovery and scientific discovery that's really exciting to you but because of the the relative size of those businesses that's always going to be in third place that's option A B you
36:13can go raise all the money you on. I mean, it was really sweet that they even built a PowerPoint. I doubt they needed to, right? I think hi Jeff Dean on raising money would have sufficed and go away and do exactly what he says, which is, you know, use AI to quote, you know, investigate advanced scientific questions, right? What are you going to do with your late 50s in life? It's it's
36:35it's totally natural. >> I don't buy that. I'm not being rude. Sorry. If you look at the resources he had available to him at Google, with the data that he had available to him at Google, he could go into Sergey and Larry's office and say, "Hey, I want X." And they would say, "Jeff, you have whatever you want." >> I don't think that's what's happening. With all due respect, I don't think
36:53that's what's happening, right? I think what's happening is you know every dollar of every piece of compute that you give to um Google cloud turns into 30% operating margins in a day because they can sell it to entropic. Every bit of compute that you give to building Gemini might turn into a decent coding model if they get their [ __ ] together and maybe you can get some entropic like
37:18revenues or some chat GPT like consumer revenues. Right? Every bit of compute that you give to drug discovery, our materials discovery, our physics discovery turns into a longshot five or sevenyear moonshot that maybe will indulge at the 10% level, but it's not going to be the core thing they do. So, if you're a senior executive in those companies, you're probably expected to do your day job, what was the old thing,