When Mustafa Suleyman used his ‘poker experience’ to negotiate price that Google paid for DeepMind – The Times of India

In 2013, the founders of DeepMind, a small but extraordinary London AI company, flew to California for a meeting at Google’ main headquarters but the discussion took place in a discreet business office across the street, a precaution to keep the acquisition talks secret. Both Demis Hassabis (who now leads the Google DeepMind) and Mustafa Suleyman (who is the head of Microsoft AI) were present at the meeting but it was the former who used his ‘poker’ experience to negotiate one of the most important purchases in Google’s history.

DeepMind founders’ decision not to talk about money

Google’s mergers and acquisitions team had assembled a panel of in-house AI experts to assess what DeepMind was worth. The DeepMind founders demonstrated their recent breakthrough, including an AI agent that had taught itself to play Atari video games, and impressed the room, But when it came to the question of price, the founders did something surprising. They said nothing, according to The…