Comment by logifail
5 days ago
The registered HQ and a large research center are in London, but ownership, executive control, substantial staffing, a big fraction of the training/serving compute, and the commercialization pathway run through Alphabet's U.S. operations, so the work is, in practical and legal senses, U.S.-based...
See also https://gwern.net/doc/reinforcement-learning/deepmind/2019-d...
"As part of a wider group reorganisation, the Company distributed intellectual property assets which had a nil book value to another group undertaking on 31 October 2019."
Honestly, claiming DeepMind is still some scrappy London-based startup is quite unfortunate :/
> The registered HQ and a large research center are in London ...
> so the work is, in practical and legal senses, U.S.-based...
These two statements literally contradict each other in both cases.
> These two statements literally contradict each other in both cases
Welcome to how multinational corporate entities structure their tax affairs!
You might like to start by reading
https://taxjustice.net/2024/11/06/corporate-tax-haven-index-...
although there are many others....
The people (about 2,000) are London based and work for a UK registered company so in both practical and legal senses the work is in the UK (eg employment taxes are paid in the UK). That the product of that work may be sold to another country for a price that transfers profits elsewhere doesn't change either of these facts.
I don't agree with the statement that you're challenging but Google DeepMind's operations in London make it (still) an important centre for AI research and is probably why the UK is ranked third on many international AI country rankings.
> Honestly, claiming DeepMind is still some scrappy London-based startup is quite unfortunate :/
Since I didn't do that, I'm not sure how that is relevant or productive.
> work is, in practical and legal senses, U.S.-based...
This seems factually false. The work happening there has to comply with UK laws, not US laws and the practical locus of researchers located there provides a pool of talent that makes it a better place to do an AI startup than places that lack it.
The point is that London is enough of a research hub in AI for it to be worth maintaining a significant research presence there and to even make researchers interested in relocating there.
DeepMind is obviously foriegn owned and controlled now, which does limit the UK's ability to exert control of and profit from it. That only makes weakening the institutions they do control, like ATI, more significant.
+1 Europe (especially) and the UK largely don't matter - it's a battle between the US and China, the gap will only grow wider and faster than it already has (and it's already getting really noticeable).
I attribute it mostly to a cultural problem and I don't think they can fix their politics from the downward spiral they're on. It's why they have a number that rounds to zero of billion dollar software companies and why all their ambitious people do their best to get to the US.