Demis Hassabis
Demis Hassabis made Theme Park at 17, co-founded DeepMind, sold it to Google, shared the 2024 Chemistry Nobel for AlphaFold2 and now runs Isomorphic Labs.
Photo: John Sears, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and converted to WebP.
Theme Park at Seventeen
Hassabis was shipping commercial games before he went to university. CNBC, profiling him in May 2024, reported that he was 17 when he shipped Theme Park, a hit video game of the 1990s. Queens' College, Cambridge says he finished his A-Levels two years early, at 16, and paid his own way through university with money from a gap-year games career.
CNBC also reports that after Theme Park he started his own games company, Elixir Studios. The report gives no year for the studio, and no dated record of it was found for this article.
Companies House, the UK register of companies, lists him as a British national born in July 1976. The Nobel Foundation gives the full date, 27 July 1976, and names London as his birthplace. Neither the day nor the city turned up in a second independent record, so the sidebar shows neither.
Games were not his only competitive outlet. CNBC calls him a child chess prodigy, and Queens' College records that he played for Cambridge in several of the varsity chess matches against Oxford.
Computer Science at Queens' College, Cambridge
Queens' College lists him as a 1994 matriculant who read Computer Science as an undergraduate. The college, which has since made him an Honorary Fellow and a Fellow Benefactor, says he later completed a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Both details come from the college's own pages. The UCL and Cambridge department pages that could have confirmed them did not open during research, and none of the pages that did open gives the year of the doctorate.
FRIARS 2022 Limited Becomes DeepMind
The company now registered as DeepMind Technologies Limited, number 07386350, was incorporated in London on 23 September 2010. For its first seven weeks it carried the name FRIARS 2022 LIMITED, which it dropped on 15 November 2010, according to its Companies House record. CNBC dates Hassabis's co-founding of DeepMind to the same year.
The officers register shows his own place on the board. He was appointed a director on 7 December 2010, about ten weeks after incorporation, and resigned the directorship on 24 January 2014. TechCrunch reported Google's purchase of the company two days later, on 26 January 2014.
The January 2014 Sale to Google
Neither Google nor DeepMind published a price. TechCrunch, citing The Information, put it at more than $500 million, and wrote that DeepMind confirmed the deal but could not disclose its terms. CNBC called it a reported $500 million in May 2024. In April 2025 CNBC wrote that the sale was reportedly worth between $400 million and $650 million. All three figures rest on press reports, so the honest version is a range rather than one number.
No filing, ranking, or interview opened for this article states what share of DeepMind Hassabis held at the sale or what he received for it. For that reason the article gives no net worth figure.
According to CNBC's 2024 profile, DeepMind was given a long leash to operate independently once it was inside Google. Under Hassabis the lab became known for work built on games such as Breakout, and for AlphaGo, which CNBC describes as an AI program that beat the world's top Go player.
AlphaFold2 and the 2024 Chemistry Nobel
The Nobel Foundation credits Hassabis and John Jumper with presenting AlphaFold2 in 2020, an AI model with which, in the foundation's words, "they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all known proteins." The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognised them "for protein structure prediction". Hassabis received a one-quarter share, and the foundation lists his affiliation at the time of the award as Google DeepMind, London.
He received the prize from King Carl Gustaf at the ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 2024, according to a photo caption in CNBC's coverage.
He is also Sir Demis Hassabis, though the two sources opened here disagree on when he was knighted. Queens' College says he was one of three leading figures in technology and AI to receive Honours from the King in 2024. CNBC wrote in 2025 that he had been a knight as of 2023.
Two Chief Executive Jobs After April 2023
Alphabet sent its first check to Isomorphic Labs, the AI life sciences company spun off from DeepMind, in November 2021, CNBC reported. The amount has never been disclosed. Hassabis is Isomorphic's chief executive, yet he does not appear on its Companies House officers list, which names two directors, Valentine Anthony Bohan and Kenneth Hohee Yi, and a company secretary, all appointed on 24 February 2021.
His second job grew in April 2023, when DeepMind was merged with Google Brain to form Google DeepMind and Hassabis was tapped to lead the combined division, according to CNBC. He has run both companies at once since then.
Isomorphic Labs Raises $600 Million
On 31 March 2025 Isomorphic announced $600 million in its first external funding round. Thrive Capital led it, GV took part, and Alphabet, already an investor, added follow-on capital.
By April 2025 the company had more than 200 people, CNBC reported. It has partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis that, the company says, "have the potential to be worth nearly $3 billion to Isomorphic Labs."
Sources
- Demis Hassabis - Facts - 2024 - NobelPrize.org
- DEEPMIND TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
- DEEPMIND TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED people - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
- ISOMORPHIC LABS LIMITED people - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
- Sir Demis Hassabis wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Queens' College
- The Future of AI and Scientific Discovery - An Interview with Sir Demis Hassabis (1994, Honorary Fellow & Fellow Benefactor)
- Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind For More Than $500M | TechCrunch
- Google's Demis Hassabis tasked with turning AI research into profits
- Inside Isomorphic Labs, Google DeepMind’s AI life sciences spinoff
- Isomorphic Labs announces $600m external investment round - Isomorphic Labs
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