{"id":44603,"date":"2026-05-19T21:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/44603\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:17:16","slug":"google-deepmind-hires-staff-from-contextual-ai-in-licensing-deal-bloomberg-news-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/44603\/","title":{"rendered":"Google DeepMind hires staff from Contextual AI in licensing deal, Bloomberg News reports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">May 19 (Reuters) &#8211; Alphabet&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/tech.yahoo.com\/ai\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:AI research;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;AI research&quot;}\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI research<\/a> subsidiary, Google DeepMind, has finalized a deal to recruit more than 20 researchers from AI \u200cstartup Contextual AI and license its technology, Bloomberg News reported \u200con Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">DeepMind has agreed to pay about $100 million to \u200bContextual as part of the agreement, while Contextual&#8217;s co-founder and CEO Douwe Kiela is among those joining DeepMind, according to the report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Google and Contextual did not immediately respond to Reuters&#8217; requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">The potential agreement is the latest \u200cmove by the Google \u2060parent to strike a licensing deal to acquire talent. Last year, it paid $2.4 billion in license fees as part \u2060of a deal to use some of AI code generation startup Windsurf&#8217;s technology under non-exclusive terms and hire several key staff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">In 2024, Google signed a licensing \u200bdeal with \u200bCharacter.AI that granted the search engine \u200bgiant a non-exclusive license to \u200cthe chatbot maker&#8217;s large language model technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Acquihires, where major tech companies pay large sums to secure the talent and technology of promising startups without formally acquiring them, are increasingly being viewed by antitrust regulators as an attempt to evade merger rules.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Unlike acquisitions that would give the buyer a \u200ccontrolling stake, these deals do not require \u200ba review by U.S. antitrust regulators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">In December, <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/NVDA\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:Nvidia;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Nvidia&quot;}\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nvidia<\/a> \u200balso agreed to license \u200bchip technology from Groq and hire its CEO, without buying \u200cthe startup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Companies&#8217; efforts to sidestep U.S. \u200bantitrust scrutiny through \u200btactics such as acquihires are a &#8220;red flag,&#8221; Acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed Assefi told Reuters in March.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Contextual AI raised $80 million in a \u200bSeries A funding round \u200cin 2024, led by venture capital firm Greycroft and existing investors, \u200bincluding Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">(Reporting by Juby Babu in \u200bMexico City; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 19 (Reuters) &#8211; Alphabet&#8217;s AI research subsidiary, Google DeepMind, has finalized a deal to recruit more than&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9179,15293,5044,132,7543,27029],"class_list":["post-44603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-google","tag-bloomberg-news","tag-contextual-ai","tag-deepmind","tag-google","tag-google-deepmind","tag-license-fees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}