Google Acquires AI Agents Startup Mechanize in Talent Deal Worth Over $1.5 Billion

Google has completed a talent acquisition of San Francisco-based AI startup Mechanize Inc., with co-founder and former CEO Tamay Besiroglu now listed as a research scientist at Google DeepMind. More than a dozen former Mechanize employees have joined Google, primarily working on the company's 'midtraining' efforts — a critical phase in developing competitive large language models.

The deal had been reported as potentially worth over $1.5 billion, though final terms were never disclosed. Mechanize had raised $9.1 million earlier this year at a $500 million valuation — a notable gap that suggests Google paid a significant premium for the team and technology. Besiroglu previously co-founded Epoch AI, an organization focused on benchmarking and evaluating AI models, giving him a strong technical pedigree in AI performance research.

Mechanize's core focus was helping AI models get better at coding — an area where Google has notably struggled to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. The acquisition fits a broader pattern: Google has been using talent deals rather than outright acquisitions, a structure that tends to attract less antitrust scrutiny. It previously absorbed the team from AI coding startup Windsurf, with that startup's former CEO Varun Mohan now leading Google's agentic coding initiative called Antigravity.

Mechanize's former chief of staff, Guive Assadi, has taken on the CEO title at the now-hollowed-out startup, suggesting the company itself may continue as a shell or pivot rather than fully dissolve. Google declined to comment on the deal's specifics.