Google’s $400 Million Bet Is Starting to Pay Off

New hardware launches from Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Wednesday showed how the acquisition of London-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind might start to generate revenue rather than just research papers.

Alphabet bought DeepMind for a reported $400 million in 2014. The firm has produced a steady stream of machine learning research – from teaching software to play the strategy game Go better than any human on the planet to creating artificial intelligence that mimicked the human brain's ability to dream and even imagine future actions. Most of these breakthroughs, however, have seemed academic, with potential commercial uses seemingly years or even decades away. In the first year Alphabet owned the company, DeepMind reported zero revenue.