How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis

How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis

Author: Y Combinator April 29, 2026 Duration: 40:56

Demis Hassabis has had one of the most extraordinary careers in tech. He started as a chess prodigy and video game designer at 17 before getting a PhD in neuroscience and going on to found DeepMind. His lab cracked Go, solved protein structure prediction with AlphaFold, and then gave it away free to every scientist on earth. That work won him the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Today he leads Google DeepMind, pushing toward the same goal he set as a teenager: AGI. On this special live episode of How to Build the Future, he sat down with YC's Garry Tan to talk about what still needs to happen to get us to AGI, his advice for founders on how to stay ahead of the curve and what the next big scientific breakthroughs might be. Chapters:00:00 — Intro00:46 — Demis Hassabis: From Chess Prodigy to DeepMind01:48 — What’s Missing Before We Get To AGI?03:36 — Why Memory Is Still Unsolved06:14 — How AlphaGo Shaped Gemini08:06 — Why Smaller Models Are Getting So Powerful10:46 — The 1000x Engineer12:40 — Continual Learning and the Future of Agents13:32 — Why AI Still Fails at Basic Reasoning15:33 — Are Agents Overhyped or Just Getting Started?18:31 — Can AI Become Truly Creative?20:26 — Open Models, Gemma, and Local AI22:26 — Why Gemini Was Built Multimodal24:08 — What Happens When Inference Gets Cheap?25:24 — From AlphaFold to the Virtual Cells28:24 — AI as the Ultimate Tool for Science30:43 — Advice for Founders33:30 — The AlphaFold Breakthrough Pattern35:20 — Can AI Make Real Scientific Discoveries?37:59 — What to Build Before AGI ArrivesApply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/applyWork at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs


Behind every successful startup is a story, and the Y Combinator Startup Podcast is where those stories are told in full. This isn't about polished theory; it's the raw, practical conversation happening between founders who have been in the trenches and the Y Combinator partners who advise them. You'll hear directly from people who have navigated the chaotic journey from a flicker of an idea to building a company that scales, discussing not just their victories but, more importantly, the hard lessons and tactical decisions that aren't found in any textbook. Each episode feels like a candid office-hours session, stripping away the hype to focus on the real work of making something people actually want. For anyone curious about the mechanics of building a technology company-the early uncertainties, the pivotal moments, and the relentless focus on execution-this podcast offers an unfiltered look at the craft. Tune in for genuine insights from the frontlines, where the focus remains squarely on the art and science of building things that matter.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Y Combinator Startup Podcast
Podcast Episodes
How to Build the Future: Tony Xu [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:32
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Duration: 24:58
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How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:38
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Building A Supersonic Plane Company From The Ground Up [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 13:45
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Duration: 29:06
Many startups fail because they run out of money. So how should you think about how to spend the money you raise?In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners Brad Flora, Pete Koomen, Nicolas Dessaigne, and Gustaf…
How To Build The AGI Future: Bob McGrew [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:44
According to OpenAI's former Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, reasoning and test-time compute will unlock more reliable and capable AI agents— and a path to scale to AGI. In this episode of How to Build the Future, YC'…
How To Use AI In Your Startup [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 14:02
AI continues to improve at an exponential pace. So what can you do as a founder to take advantage of it? In this episode of Office Hours, YC Partners discuss what you should consider if you’re thinking about pivoting to…
How To Build The Future: Parker Conrad [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:28
In this episode of How to Build the Future, Garry sits down with Parker Conrad, Co-founder & CEO of Rippling, the all-in-one HR, Finance, and IT software company that’s valued at $13.5 billion. Parker is the co-founder o…
Building A $2 Billion SaaS Company: Lessons From A Two Time Founder [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:31
Two-time founder Rujul Zaparde knows a thing or two about resilience and learning from failure. After dropping out of college to build FlightCar, he worked as a PM at Airbnb, and later as a visiting partner at YC. In 202…