The DeepMind Strategy - How AI is Revolutionizing Business Models

The companies are purchased when they are still early stage, in their first 1–3 years of life, where the focus is more on people and pure technological advancements rather than revenues (AI is the only sector in which the pure team value exceeds the business one). They maintain elements of their original brand and retain the entire existing team ("acqui-hire"). Companies maintain full independence, both physically speaking -- often they keep in place their original headquarters -- as well as operationally. This independence is so vast to allow them to pursue acquisition strategies in turn (DeepMind bought Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory in 2014). The parent company uses the subsidiary services and integrates rather than replaces the existing business (e.g., Google Brain and Deepmind).