Google DeepMind offshoot nears $4bn valuation just a month after founding

A month-old British start-up called Emulate, founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, is in advanced talks to raise as much as $700mn at a valuation of about $3.7bn including the new capital. UK-based Index Ventures and Silicon Valley-based Lightspeed Venture Partners are expected to jointly lead the round, according to people familiar with the deal; the firms and Emulate declined to comment. Emulate was incorporated in August and was founded by Jack Parker-Holder, Matthew McGill, Philip Ball and other former DeepMind researchers who helped create Genie, DeepMind’s world-model system. Genie can generate realistic video and interactive 3D environments from short prompts; its January unveiling unsettled video-game stocks including Take-Two, Roblox and Unity. World models seek to understand and replicate physical space and are viewed as a less crowded frontier than the large language models behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. The fundraising follows Sir Demis Hassabis’s move from DeepMind chief executive to chair. The article places Emulate within the wave of “neo-labs” spun out of major AI companies: investors are assigning very large valuations based substantially on founders’ reputations, sometimes before first products exist, as they seek the next Anthropic or OpenAI. Jeff Dean recently left Google to found US start-up Discovery Loop; Emulate is described as the third UK neo-lab to emerge from DeepMind’s London offices this year with hundreds of millions in funding. The comparison set includes David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence, reported at about $1bn raised at a $5bn valuation, and Recursive Superintelligence, whose former DeepMind/OpenAI team reportedly raised more than $600mn at a $4bn valuation. The principal constraints are the cost of compute and competition for leading researchers. Sifted had previously reported that Parker-Holder’s team was seeking significant capital. The piece reports negotiations and market comparisons, not a completed financing, and does not claim Emulate has a public product.