Meta CEO Zuckerberg Reveals Failed Attempt to Acquire DeepMind

On August 9 Beijing time, in a recent interview, Meta's CEO Zuckerberg mentioned the past failed experience of acquiring the artificial intelligence research laboratory DeepMind, hinting that DeepMind's CEO Demis Hassabis used Facebook's acquisition intention at that time as a bargaining chip to get a better deal price from Google.

Around 2014, DeepMind was a little-known London AI startup founded by Hassabis, Shane Legg, and Mustafa Suleyman. Google acquired the artificial intelligence research laboratory DeepMind at a price of more than 500 million US dollars. And before the acquisition, Zuckerberg said that Facebook also wanted to negotiate to acquire this startup.

In 2013, as the artificial intelligence track heated up, Facebook began to approach the artificial intelligence research laboratory DeepMind. But during the in-depth talks between the two sides, due to the failure of the talks, Zuckerberg's acquisition also failed, and the reason for the breakdown of the negotiation was not clearly stated in the reports about this acquisition at that time. One year later, Google acquired the company at a price of more than 500 million US dollars.

In the recent interview, Zuckerberg admitted the acquisition intention at that time, I really wanted to acquire DeepMind, but they went to Google. Recalling this failed experience, he added, By the way, Demis (the CEO of DeepMind) is great, kicked me aside and chose Google to get a good deal price, and I respect that!

At present, Meta has an information business of about 19 billion US dollars in the US, and with the support of artificial intelligence, Meta's information business may have more advantages than Apple's iMessage business.

After the failure of Facebook's acquisition of DeepMind, it launched its own artificial intelligence laboratory Facebook AI Research (FAIR). In this interview, Zuckerberg also mentioned this laboratory and mentioned that it has produced the open source model Llama for Meta's artificial intelligence business.