DeepMind A.I. unit lost $649M last year and had a $1.5B debt waived by Alphabet

They spent it on the compute costs for training GPT models. Training a deep learning neural network on massive amounts of data ain't cheap!

Considering how much deep learning is showing up in every possible Google product I'm assuming they will continue to keep paying the bills.

My impression is that places like DeepMind are more of a social good than a profit seeker. Most universities simply cannot afford such big and expensive AI. So I suspect that DeepMind is Google’s way of expanding the frontier of AI knowledge through charitable donations. It’s ultimately good PR for them and maybe influences businesses to pick Google Cloud Services for brand appeal. Also I’m guessing since it’s research, they get a huge tax write-off.

Perhaps they will deliver once-in-decade unicorn breakthroughs that can ultimately be monetized? Maybe Google’s next phase will be AI generated content. With that they can completely cut out other content creators, and thereby collect affiliate cash through sales. For example, generating those “Top 10 Holiday Toys” guides automatically.