Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recalled why selling DeepMind to Google became inevitable, speaking at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists Annual Lecture. Hassabis said the company did not have the financial resources to remain independent while pursuing AGI, stating, “He saw Google as an AI company. The reason I sold was I knew it would require 7 billion dollars of investment in order to take on, try and become one of those companies." He contrasted this with DeepMind's reality as a startup, adding, “And I was barely able to scrape together 10 million dollar rounds at that point.” The gap between needed capital and investor offers made independent continuation difficult. Hassabis also explained that DeepMind's breakthrough work on Atari video games brought attention from major technology companies, saying, "we had alerted enough of the Silicon Valley titans. They were coming after my people." Unlike many startups, DeepMind had no commercial product, as Hassabis noted: "We had no business, we didn't even have a product, obviously not, because I was trying to make the core technology."