The term Google Mafia refers to the network of former Google employees who have founded or led successful startups after their tenure at Google. In 2024, this group has been particularly influential in the AI sector, with several startups achieving significant valuations and securing substantial funding.
As of October 2024, 14 AI startups led by ex-Google employees have collectively raised approximately $14.7 billion, reaching a combined valuation of $71.61 billion. Notable examples include Anthropic, co-founded by former Googler Dario Amodei, which reached a $40 billion valuation; Perplexity, founded by ex-Google intern Aravind Srinivas, attained a $62 billion valuation, and Mistral AI, co-founded by Arthur Mensch, who departed from Google DeepMind, reached a $6.2 billion valuation.
Beyond AI, the broader Google Mafia has been instrumental in founding over 2,300 companies, collectively raising $98.2 billion in funding. These ventures span various sectors, including fintech, entertainment tech, and workplace automation.
Venture capital firms have shown keen interest in these startups, with Andreessen Horowitz emerging as the most active investor, having backed 46 Google alum-founded companies since 2018. In addition to individual entrepreneurial efforts, Google continues to support the startup ecosystem through initiatives like the Google for Startups Founders Funds.
The influence of the Google Mafia underscores the impact that former Google employees have on the tech startup landscape, particularly in advancing AI technologies and attracting substantial venture capital investment.
That said, here is a list of AI startups founded by Google alums that bagged funding in 2024.
Cohere (Canada)
Founder/s: Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: $970M
The brainchild of two Canadian ex-Google researchers Cohere develops advanced language models and AI technologies focused on natural language processing. Their language model can engage in open-ended dialogue, answer questions, and assist with various tasks across industries.
Earlier this year, the Toronto startup offering an AI platform for enterprises has landed $500 million in a Series D funding round. With this round, the company’s valuation hits $5.5 billion. The investment came from Cisco, AMD, and Fujitsu alongside participation from Canadian pension investment manager PSP Investments and Canada’s export credit agency EDC.
Cradle (Netherlands)
Founder/s: Elise de Reus, Stef van Grieken
Founded year: 2015
Total funding: $103M
Founded by experts from experts from Google, Deepmind, and other tech giants, Cradle’s generative AI platform helps scientists to design better proteins, up to ten times faster and more successfully, speeding up the development of new therapeutics and bio-based products such as enzymes, antibodies, and bio-based materials and chemicals.
Last month, Cradle raised $73 million in Series B funding led by IVP, with participation from previous investors Index Ventures, and Kindred Capital.
/dev/agents (US)
Founder/s: David Singleton, Hugo Barra, Ficus Kirkpatrick, Nicholas Jitkoff
Founded year: 2022
Total funding: NA
Recently, a group of tech experts from Google has joined hands for a new startup dubbed /dev/agents. This new company specialises in launching a cloud operating system for AI agents. The platform makes it easier to build AI agents in a new cloud-based operating system. It will work seamlessly across all devices, making AI more accessible and functional. The startup also wants to create a new user interface so that people can interact with agents on various hardware devices more naturally.
A couple of weeks back, the startup snapped $56 million led by Index Ventures and Alphabet’s investment fund CapitalG. The round also saw participation from angel investors, including Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy.
Simplismart (US)
Founder/s: Amritanshu Jain, Devansh Ghatak
Founded year: 2022
Total funding: $7M
Simplismart is a platform that helps businesses and researchers build and manage deep learning models without writing code. As per the company, it has built the fastest inference engine that helps AI apps be more responsive and cheaper for businesses to use. It offers a range of powerful features and integrations, giving you complete control of the modern MLOps lifecycle.
In October, Simplismart secured $7 million in Series A funding led by Accel with participation from Shastra VC, Titan Capital, and high-profile angels, including Akshay Kothari, Co-Founder of Notion.
Magic (US)
Founder/s: Eric Steinberger, Sebastian De Ro
Founded year: 2022
Total funding: $465M
Led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Magic is an AI startup that creates tools to help software engineers with coding tasks like writing, reviewing, debugging, and planning. These tools act like automated programmer, learning from the context of different coding projects. The company developed a model called LTM-2-mini, which can understand and process information equivalent to 10 million lines of code or 750 novels.
Recently, Magic raised $320 million in funding, with additional investments from Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Jane Street, Sequoia, and Atlassian. This followed an earlier Series B funding round of $117 million in February. Magic is important in the AI coding industry because it enhances the efficiency and capabilities of software development.
BeyondMath (UK)
Founder/s: Alan Patterson, Darren Garvey
Founded year: 2022
Total funding: $8.5M
BeyondMath‘s platform uses AI to simulate the physical world for complex phenomena, such as those used in designing vehicles, aircraft, batteries, and data centres. It employs AI trained to decipher the core equations of the physical world, delivering a monumental leap in speed and cost. It is said to accelerate engineering iterations by a factor of 1,000 compared to current solutions.
In August this year, BeyondMath scooped $8.5 million in seed funding led by UP.Partners, with significant participation from Insight Partners and InMotion Ventures, the investment arm of JLR.
Maxim AI (US)
Founder/s: Vaibhavi Gangwar, Akshay Deo
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $3.0M
California-based Maxim AI is an enterprise-grade evaluation and observability platform for AI applications. It aims to bring the best practices of traditional software development to streamline AI development workflows. It streamlines the entire AI development lifecycle from design to production, enabling faster, reliable, and high-quality deployment of AI across organisations.
A few months back, Maxim AI closed $3 million in a funding round led by Elevation Capital. The round also saw participation from angel investors, including founders of Postman, Chargebee, Groww, Razorpay, and Media.net.
CuspAI (UK)
Founder/s: Max Welling, Chad Edwards
Founded year: 2024
Total funding: $30M
CuspAI is an AI startup that uses generative AI, deep learning, and molecular simulation to develop a platform that generates and evaluates new materials. The platform works like a search engine for materials, allowing users to request specific properties for new materials. CuspAI’s goal is to tackle sustainability challenges by developing materials that can address climate change, renewable energy, and other global concerns.
In June, CuspAI secured $30 million in seed funding. The round was led by Hoxton Ventures, with significant participation from Basis Set Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other investors in the round include LocalGlobe, Northzone, Touring Capital, Giant Ventures, FJ Labs, Tiferes Ventures, and Zero Prime Ventures. Prominent angel investors, including Mehdi Ghissassi and Dorothy Chou from Google Deepmind, also participated in the round.
Glean (US)
Founder/s: Arvind Jain
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: $655M
Enterprise AI platform Glean focuses on user-friendly AI tools reflecting a broader trend in the industry to make AI more accessible to non-technical employees. This trend has been driven by the realisation that AI adoption within organisations often hinges on employee comfort with the technology.
In September, Glean raised $260 million in its latest Series E funding round, securing a valuation of $4.6 billion. The round was led by new investors Altimeter and DST Global, with participation from existing backers such as Coatue, General Catalyst, and Sequoia Capital.
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