Google's AI Chief is actually an Anthropic Benefactor, with Hassabis quietly overseeing the global AI ecosystem

Original Title: "Shocker! Is Hassabis the Hidden Boss of the AI World? Mafia Walks Away with $14 Billion in 4 Years"

Original Source: Synced

Just now, the global tech community was rocked by a shocking revelation—

Demis Hassabis, the top AI figure at Google, founder of DeepMind, and Nobel Prize laureate, has been uncovered as the major silent backer of his greatest nemesis, the super-unicorn Anthropic!

This carefully orchestrated undercover operation is truly jaw-dropping.

Even more unexpectedly, following this clue to its source, a sprawling "DeepMind Mafia" empire intricately woven by Hassabis himself, with intertwined interests, has now fully emerged.

From the $900 billion-valued Anthropic to the Microsoft-backed Inflection AI, and most recently the Ineffable Intelligence that just secured over $3 billion in funding... the soul figures or early backers behind some of the AI world’s most high-profile, heavily funded startups are all him!

This is arguably the most thrilling "Trojan Horse" maneuver in the history of technology—the "AI Godfather" has quietly wielded dominion over the global AI ecosystem right under our noses.

In today's battleground of large models, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude are locked in a fierce clash.

To suppress their opponent in the arena, the two companies engage in a daily pixel-level arms race.

However, who would have thought that when Google's employees were burning the midnight oil to benchmark against Claude, their ultimate boss had silently acquired the original shares of this "archrival" back when Anthropic was founded?

According to the latest insider information revealed by the Financial Times, Hassabis, in his capacity as a personal angel investor, secretly invested in Anthropic at its inception.

This hidden ownership relationship had never been known to the public before.

The astonishing level of this is as if, while Coca-Cola and Pepsi were fiercely competing, the CEO of Coca-Cola turned out to be one of the founding shareholders of Pepsi.

Just look at Anthropic's terrifying scale today, and you will understand how valuable Hassabis's investment was.

According to sources, in the latest funding round, Anthropic's valuation has soared to an astounding $900 billion!

It has not only surpassed its archenemy OpenAI but has also directly expanded into the fastest-growing "Leviathan" in global tech history.

Calculating it, the assets in Hassabis's hands have already made him a formidable figure.

What's even more interesting is that Hassabis's "parent company" Google has subsequently joined the game.

Google officially announced earlier that it would invest billions of dollars in Anthropic to establish a deep cloud and AI partnership.

Even in the rumored agreement, the scale of this "two-way rush" is astonishing—

Google plans to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic; and as a hedge and return, Anthropic has promised to pour a whopping $200 billion into Google Cloud services over the next five years!

With his left hand controlling the Google AI empire and his early-stage incubated $900 billion archenemy on the right, there's also hundreds of billions in cloud service deals in between.

Hassabis's actual actions tell us, "If I bet on both sides to the max, the only winner in the end can only be me."

When digging deeper, it gets even more intriguing.

The relationship between these two individuals is far more than just a simple tie on the capital front.

According to insiders close to the top of Anthropic, Anthropic's founder and CEO, Dario Amodei, has privately always regarded Hassabis as his life role model and spiritual mentor.

Despite his previous role as a core executive at OpenAI, in his heart, Dario viewed Hassabis's DeepMind as the holy temple of modern AI engineering.

In Dario's viral personal essay "Machines of Loving Grace," although not explicitly named, his words were a veiled tribute to a certain "AI pioneer."

It was clear to those in the know—he was referring to Hassabis.

"The Sofa Scene" at the World Economic Forum

This love-hate, mutually respectful relationship left a famous mark at the 2025 World Economic Forum.

At that time, as the leaders of the two industry giants, Hassabis and Dario were awkwardly squeezed into a small two-seater sofa by the onsite staff during an interview.

Two AI titans, each worth hundreds of billions and shaping the future of humanity, were forced to sit shoulder to shoulder due to limited space.

According to eyewitnesses, the scene was described as follows: "It was a textbook-level bromance in the tech world. The two apparent arch-enemies were squeezed together in front of the camera, their eyes not filled with animosity but instead with the tacit understanding and smiles of masters."

This personal intimacy that transcended corporate boundaries not only thawed the coldness of business rivalry but also demonstrated to us that at the pinnacle of AI, they were fellow travelers on the same path.

Hassabis's ambition extends far beyond a single Anthropic.

In Silicon Valley, there was once a famous "PayPal Mafia." This entrepreneurial gang composed of Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and others nearly dominated the early Web 2.0 era.

Today, a larger and more formidable "DeepMind Mafia" is rapidly expanding, with dual headquarters in London and Silicon Valley.

According to the latest statistics from the leading global venture capital databases PitchBook and Dealroom: Since 2021, core technical staff and executives who have left DeepMind have successively founded over 12 super AI startups.

In just four years, this faction has collectively raised over $14 billion in the market!

This amount is enough to make any venture capital firm tremble.

Let's take a look at the empire map formed by Hassabis and his proteges—

This list is still rapidly growing.

As a senior Silicon Valley investor put it: "Nowadays, in the AI industry, as long as your resume says 'Former Senior Researcher at DeepMind,' you don't even need to finish your fundraising pitch deck—the check is already on the table."

The most terrifying aspect of Hassabis's capital puzzle lies in its comprehensiveness and secrecy.

As the super-rich man who sold DeepMind to Google for £400 million in 2014, Hassabis holds a massive cash flow.

But instead of buying yachts or mansions like ordinary billionaires, he turned this money into countless precise capital tendrils, quietly reaching into every former colleague's and subordinate's entrepreneurial projects.

David Silver wants to build general AI, Hassabis invests.

Mustafa Suleyman ventures into Inflection AI, Hassabis invests.

Even the renowned startup accelerator Entrepreneurs First (EF), Hassabis is also a key angel investor behind it.

This capital layout completely reveals the brutal truth of the competition among contemporary tech giants—

Under the spotlight, giants fight tooth and nail in PR wars, patent wars, and fierce competition to gain market share and boost their stock prices.

However, behind the scenes, the top AI elites are intricately interconnected through a web of personal relationships, mentorships, and past collaborations.

This phenomenon has even caused the usually independent Musk to feel anxiety and anger.

In the recent high-profile "Musk sues Ultraman" lawsuit, court documents and testimonies reveal that the name Hassabis appears with high frequency in Musk's litigation materials.

Foreign media outlet The Verge sharply commented, "Hassabis doesn't even need to personally appear in court; he already resides rent-free and permanently in Musk's mind, becoming Musk's haunting nightmare."

Because Musk has realized that no matter how hard he tries to outmaneuver OpenAI, whenever he looks around, he always seems to encounter the intricate web laid out by Hassabis and his 'DeepMind Mafia'.

If penetrating capital externally and nurturing an irregular army is Hassabis's foreign king's way, then seizing centralized power and ruling behind the scenes within Google is his internal sage's method.

While externally deploying capital, DeepMind's senior executives are rapidly seizing full control of the core power of the entire Google tech empire.

2023, Google's AI unification

Looking back at 2023, when OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, catching Google off guard and causing a stock price plummet, Google's parent company, in a moment of epiphany, made a historic decision: to forcibly merge Google's once-proud Google Brain with DeepMind, establishing the new Google DeepMind, all under Hassabis's unified leadership.

This merger, ostensibly a joining of forces, was actually a complete takeover by DeepMind of Google's core R&D capabilities.

At that time, Hassabis declared, "We need to accelerate decision-making, enhance collaboration and execution speed to focus on achieving maximum impact."

It means: When it comes to AI business here, I call the shots.

Key Player Assumes Overall Control

In just two short years, the trusted core members of DeepMind have completed a thorough cleanse and takeover of the core decision-making layer of Google's AI and cloud services.

Koray Kavukcuoglu, former CTO of DeepMind, was officially promoted last year to Google's Chief AI Architect.

This means that the underlying architecture of all of Google's future AI products now bears the hallmark of DeepMind.

Pushmeet Kohli, who led the Nobel Prize-winning scientific masterpiece AlphaFold project, was formally appointed last month as Google Cloud's Chief Scientist. Thus, the technical brain behind Google's most profitable cloud business has also been switched to DeepMind's trusted aide.

The "Emperor" on the British Isle

Most remarkably, even though DeepMind has completely reversed the devouring of the Google AI empire, Demis Hassabis, wielding supreme power, stubbornly keeps his headquarters in the King's Cross area of London in the UK, rather than moving to Mountain View in Silicon Valley.

Google even, to accommodate this true deity, spent $1 billion to build a magnificent headquarters in London's King's Cross area.

"Demis has immeasurable soft power within Google and the entire tech industry," exclaimed Hassabis's long-time confidant and EF co-founder Matt Clifford.

"While everyone is still figuring out what AI is, he is a pioneer. The fact that today's young entrepreneurs can secure such massive funding is largely because they carry Demis's spiritual endorsement. His influence is growing exponentially, whether he is in Silicon Valley or London."

As a former internationally renowned chess prodigy whose knighthood was bestowed by the British royal family, Demis Hassabis clearly views the entire global AI industry as his grand chessboard.

In this chess game, Gemini is his visible piece on the board, leading the charge for Google; Anthropic is his hidden move, preparing for all contingencies; while Ineffable, Inflection, Mistral, and other unicorn companies are his scattered vanguards in the vast world, ready to encircle the market at any time.

As for himself, he sits firmly in his office in London's King's Cross area, watching as capital, talent, and technology circulate perfectly within the network he has woven.

This exposure by the foreign media has shattered the cruelest truth in the tech industry: the so-called battle of giants is nothing but a capital game played by the top elite.

No matter which way the tide of technology surges, it will not slip through the hands of those who have already bought the wave.

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