Google Part III: The AI Company
Acquired6 Okt 2025

Google Part III: The AI Company

Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI system from ChatGPT to Claude (and, of course, Gemini). They employed nearly all the top AI talent: Ilya Sutskever, Geoff Hinton, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei — more or less everyone who leads modern AI worked at Google circa 2014. They built the best dedicated AI infrastructure (TPUs!) and deployed AI at massive scale years before anyone else. And yet... the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 caught them completely flat-footed. How on earth did the greatest business in history wind up playing catch-up to a nonprofit-turned-startup?

Today we tell the complete story of Google's 20+ year AI journey: from their first tiny language model in 2001 through the creation Google Brain, the birth of the transformer, the talent exodus to OpenAI (sparked by Elon Musk's fury over Google’s DeepMind acquisition), and their current all-hands-on-deck response with Gemini. And oh yeah — a little business called Waymo that went from crazy moonshot idea to doing more rides than Lyft in San Francisco, potentially building another Google-sized business within Google. This is the story of how the world's greatest business faces its greatest test: can they disrupt themselves without losing their $140B annual profit-generating machine in Search?

Sponsors:

Links:

Carve Outs:


More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC


‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Episoder(214)

TSMC Founder Morris Chang

TSMC Founder Morris Chang

We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum… conduct...

27 Jan 20252h 56min

TSMC (Remastered)

TSMC (Remastered)

We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Founded in 1987 by the then-56 year old Morris Chan...

21 Jan 20252h 30min

Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)

Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)

M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated. And Mars itself is 100%...

16 Des 20243h 52min

IKEA

IKEA

IKEA may be the most singular company we’ve ever studied on Acquired. They’re a globally scaled, $50B annual revenue company with no direct competitors — yet have only ~5% market share. They’re one of...

18 Nov 20243h 21min

Meta

Meta

Meta is a company everyone knows (literally, everyone). But, somehow, it’s also a company that few people feel they actually understand. Their products are used by more humans than any other’s in hist...

28 Okt 20246h 19min

Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)

Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)

Here it is: the complete video of the most unbelievable night of Acquired’s nine-year life… our sold out live show at the Chase Center in San Francisco. We joked during the months (months!) of prepara...

30 Sep 20242h 26min

The Mark Zuckerberg Interview

The Mark Zuckerberg Interview

Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time. At Chase Center on September 10, 2024, he did an unprecedented thing: a live conversation in front of 6,000 people on Meta’s company strategy, sharing stori...

18 Sep 20241h 30min

Chase Center + Summer Update

Chase Center + Summer Update

Summer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”:Tickets are now available for our live show at Chase Center in San Francisco, with special guests including Mark Zuckerberg (!). The s...

8 Aug 202421min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
pengepodden-2
pengesnakk
utbytte
rss-politisk-preik
finansredaksjonen
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
rss-markedspuls-2
rss-pa-konto
rss-sunn-okonomi
lederpodden
rss-investering-gjort-enkelt