Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist, announced on Wednesday that he and three other former Googlers are leaving to cofound Discovery Loop, an AI startup focused on AI applications in science and engineering. Discovery Loop is a public benefit corporation whose mission is to "automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress," Dean wrote on X. The company aims to automate the process by which scientists and engineers propose, implement, run, and evaluate experiments, enabling "parallel execution of thousands of experiments." Discovery Loop wants to build systems to tackle parts of the 14 challenges formerly known as the "National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges," which include topics like "Reverse Engineer the Brain" and "Prevent Nuclear Terror." The 2008 committee that created the challenges included Google cofounder Larry Page. Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures led the initial funding round, with Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, and Doerr Capital also participating. Alphabet is a founding investor and cloud partner, according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who thanked Dean for his "incredible 27-year run at Google." Dean, Google's 30th employee, helped advance Google Search, Google News, Google Translate, and Google Ads, and co-founded the Google Brain team. He also helped develop the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).