The funding model of Bell Labs ultimately failed due to the surrounding ecosystem and the breakup of monopolies, which made it difficult to maintain large-scale research organizations.

Massive monopolies, like Bell Labs or Google, have the resources to fund long-term research projects that can lead to significant innovations.

The rise of Silicon Valley and the introduction of stock options attracted talent away from traditional research labs, contributing to the decline of Bell Labs.

Investing in the internet was a strategic choice in 1994, as it was a growing field with significant potential, and that focus has continued to guide investments.

At DeepMind, we aimed to create a modern-day Bell Labs, demonstrating that cutting-edge research can thrive in a startup environment, blending ambitious thinking with top engineering. There should be a more fluid two-way system between academia and startups, especially when ideas are mature enough to be spun out easily.

My first investment was in 3Com, the company behind the Palm Pilot, which I believed was a promising technology because it was being used by my parents at the World Bank.

We built our first biology lab for about $150,000 using secondhand equipment, which was significantly less than the conventional estimate of a few million dollars.

The transition from vacuum tubes to transistors required decades of fundamental research and innovation, primarily driven by cost reductions in large-scale operations.

Revolutionizing and completely insourcing semiconductor production in the US would require a decade and a trillion dollars.