Deepmind, the artificial intelligence company owned by Google, has posted a huge increase in loss for the full year as its debt level reached more than £1bn.

Read more: Google takes off as revenue tops expectations

The London-headquartered company reported a loss of £470m in 2018, compared to £302m the previous year, according to its latest accounts.

While Deepmind almost doubled its revenue over the year to £103m, this was offset by a near doubling of staff costs to £400m.

Deepmind also said it has a debt pile of £1.04bn due for repayment this year, £883m of which is owed to Googles parent company Alphabet.

A Deepmind spokesperson said: “Our DeepMind for Google team continues to make great strides bringing our expertise and knowledge to real-world challenges at Google scale, nearly doubling revenues in the past year.

“We will continue to invest in fundamental research and our world-class, interdisciplinary team, and look forward to the breakthroughs that lie ahead.”

Google bought the AI firm for £400m in 2014 after fending off rival bidder Facebook. Deepmind has since proved to be a costly venture for Alphabet, with huge staff costs accounting for most of its expenses.

Read more: Read More – Source

[contf] [contfnew]

CityAM

[contfnewc] [contfnewc]