Jeff Dean, one of the longest-serving and most influential executives at Google, is stepping down from the search giant to launch his own AI startup.

Coming with him as co-founders are several other top researchers at the company, including Sanjay Ghemawat, a top engineer and senior fellow at Google, Quoc Le, a key AI researcher and founding member of Google Brain, and Oriol Vinyals, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. Dean reportedly plans to serve as CEO.

Together, the group is starting Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation that seeks to use AI to turbo-charge scientific research.

Discovery Loop says it plans to use high-octane algorithms to initiate and iterate thousands of experiments simultaneously, with the goal of partially automating the research process and expanding the scale at which experimentation can be conducted.

The startup is also interested in using AI to help create more powerful AI (a process known as recursive self-improvement), which would cut human iteration out of the loop entirely.

“While science and engineering have tremendously advanced society over past centuries, progress has traditionally relied on slow, sequential human iterations, creating a significant bottleneck,” the company said in a press release. “Discovery Loop is developing advanced AI systems that leverage massive computational scale to fundamentally transform the speed and efficiency of innovation by automating complete experimental loops.”

Using AI to accelerate scientific discovery has been a key interest of the science and tech communities for many years, but until recently, it remained a largely experimental field with limited commercial application.

The company has received financial support from a number of different sources, including Google’s parent company Alphabet. The initial funding round is being co-led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, the company announced Wednesday. Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, and Doerr Capital also participated.

“The next great frontier for AI is to go beyond answering questions and to begin making discoveries,” the founding team said in a joint statement. “By fundamentally accelerating how engineering and scientific discovery are conducted, we can deliver the benefits of transformative technologies to the world far sooner.”

Dean has worked at Google since 1999 and was Google’s 30th employee. Over the years, he has contributed to Google search’s core infrastructure, including its crawling and indexing system, and its query-serving system. He has also had a significant impact on Google Gemini’s multimodal models, and played a leading role in the company’s early AI research.

“We think there is opportunity for AI to more fully automate what has traditionally been a very human-intensive experimental loop,” Dean told the New York Times. “You will get both a higher quantity and a higher quality of experiments, and that will lead to scientific breakthroughs and advances.”

Telegram briefly disappeared from Apple’s App Store after a child sexual abuse material violation, showing how quickly a moderation failure can become a distribution problem.

Apple temporarily removed the messaging app on Monday after prohibited material was reportedly found on the platform, according to Forbes. Existing installations continued to function, but new downloads and reinstalls were unavailable until Telegram returned to the App Store later that day.

The incident highlights a growing reality for platforms built around user-generated content: developers are increasingly judged not only by the software they build, but also by how effectively they police what users share. Telegram said it removed the content and banned the responsible account.

Telegram argues it continues to make the platform safer

In an emailed statement to Forbes, Telegram confirmed the development, and reiterated its efforts to keep the platform safe.

According to Telegram’s safety overview page, the company has removed more than 339,000 CSAM-related groups and channels in 2026, compared with the 29,640 reported CSAM-related takedowns in 2025.

The company noted that reports from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) helped it make those decisions.

In a post on X, Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, explained why the sexual material was able to stay up long enough to be detected by Apple.

Durov noted that the now-banned user, who demands money from groups and channels to avoid being targeted, edited an old message in a public group chat, to which the image was appended. As a result, users could not see or report the chat to Telegram before the user subsequently reported the issue to Apple, triggering the removal.

According to Durov, the incident shows that malicious actors are increasingly using tactics designed to evade Telegram’s moderation systems.

Telegram faces scrutiny beyond the App Store

The App Store removal is only the latest in what has become a difficult period for Telegram, as the messaging platform faces mounting scrutiny.

That scrutiny extends beyond the app itself to its founder, Pavel Durov. Russian authorities continue to investigate Durov over allegations linked to criminal activity conducted through Telegram.

Pressure is also mounting elsewhere. The Australian government recently filed legal action against Telegram, alleging the company failed to remove violent extremist content.

Against that backdrop, Apple’s temporary removal of Telegram from the App Store reinforces a broader trend: the company is facing pressure from multiple directions at once. Whether from regulators, courts, or app store operators, Telegram is increasingly being judged not only on its privacy features but also on how effectively it detects, removes, and responds to illegal content shared by its users.

What developers should take from Telegram’s removal

The development sounds an alarm for enterprises and software developers who must rely on software chains to reach customers. Just as Durov noted in his post, if Telegram can be removed without prior notification, anyone can be, too.

The incident is a reminder that app-store access is a business dependency, not a guarantee. For developers, staying compliant now extends beyond software quality to maintaining effective systems for detecting and removing illegal user-generated content.

Other News: Gmail now warns BCC recipients before they use Reply All, helping prevent them from accidentally revealing their involvement and email address to everyone on the thread.

Texas data center developers can still build, but getting power from the state’s main grid just became more complicated.

Gov. Greg Abbott ordered regulators to pause approvals for data centers seeking connections to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid until proposed projects complete a comprehensive audit. The move comes as requested electricity demand has climbed above 474 GW, with data centers accounting for roughly 90% of the proposed load.

For cloud providers, AI developers, and infrastructure investors, the order could translate into longer approval timelines, additional disclosure requirements, and greater uncertainty around project schedules.

Texas wants more proof before approving connections

Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit data centers moving through the grid’s interconnection queue.

The reviews will examine projected electricity use, on-site and off-site power generation, water demand, cooling operations, tax incentives, ownership information, and measures to reduce noise, lighting, and other effects on nearby communities.

“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” Abbott said in a statement, cited by The Texas Tribune.

“Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid,” Abbott added.

The Data Center Coalition, a trade group representing major technology companies, said the audit could help regulators distinguish responsible developers without unnecessarily slowing compliant projects.

“Done correctly, this review can showcase the good actors in the data center industry rather than delaying them unnecessarily, ensuring Texas will continue to be the national leader in economic development,” coalition spokesperson Dan Diorio said, per The Texas Tribune.

Officials have not said how long the reviews will take or when approvals will resume.

The 474 GW figure needs context

The Texas Tribune noted that ERCOT’s queue includes more than 1,800 proposed projects representing over 474 GW of requested power, more than five times the grid’s record peak demand.

The number does not mean Texas must immediately supply 474 GW. Developers often join interconnection queues early because grid access can take years, and some proposals never advance beyond the planning stage.

TechCrunch reported that ERCOT’s queue stood at 233 GW in January before more than doubling in less than six months.

Even if only a portion of the projects are completed, the requests show the scale of electricity demand associated with AI infrastructure, cloud services, and other computing workloads.

Not every Texas project is affected

The directive applies to data centers seeking access to the ERCOT grid. It does not necessarily stop projects that generate their own electricity or facilities planned in regions outside ERCOT, including El Paso.

The Texas Tribune has identified at least 335 operating data centers and 248 planned facilities in the state. Texas is the country’s second-largest data center market behind Virginia, according to the publication.

Developers may now need to account for longer approval timelines, more detailed disclosures, and the possibility that a grid connection will be rejected.

What IT and infrastructure leaders should review

Companies planning Texas capacity should verify whether a proposed site depends on an ERCOT connection and whether its schedule includes time for the new audit.

Operators should also review cooling designs, water projections, backup or on-site generation, local community requirements, and any tax incentives tied to the facility.

The review does not end Texas’ data center expansion, but it adds a new gate to the process. Until regulators explain the audit timeline and approval standards, developers should treat grid access as a project risk rather than an assumption.

Related News: Texas is not alone in slowing data center growth. See why New York paused new hyperscale permits while it studies impacts on the grid, water, ratepayers, and local communities.