Google DeepMind is investing $75 million in A24 and will co-develop AI tools for filmmaking with the indie studio, the two companies announced on Monday, June 22. DeepMind is calling it a "first-of-its-kind" partnership, with the lab building features and A24's filmmakers steering what gets built. The deal is the largest publicly disclosed studio–AI lab tie-up to date and pulls one of Hollywood's most credentialed brands directly into Gemini-era model development.
A24 is an unusual partner for a frontier lab. The studio's recent slate includes Marty Supreme, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the current release Backrooms, and it has worked with Timothée Chalamet and Anne Hathaway on several projects. That credibility is the asset DeepMind is buying — Google DeepMind gets feedback and guidance from working filmmakers as it designs tools, and A24 gets capital plus a seat at the table on how those tools behave.
The structure matters. Rather than licensing a generative video model into a studio's post-production pipeline, DeepMind is embedding with A24 from the design stage. That is a direct response to the past two years of Hollywood backlash against AI-generated footage, voice cloning, and training-data disputes. Framing the deal as artist-led is both a product choice and a political one.
Key facts
- 01Google DeepMind is investing $75 million in indie studio A24 to co-develop AI filmmaking tools.
- 02DeepMind is branding the tie-up a 'first-of-its-kind' partnership giving its researchers direct feedback from A24 filmmakers.
- 03A24's recent slate includes Marty Supreme, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and Backrooms, with talent like Timothée Chalamet and Anne Hathaway.
- 04Netflix bought Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup InterPositive earlier in 2026; Amazon's MGM Studios launched an AI production unit last year.
- 05Demis Hassabis is positioning the A24 deal as artist-led tool development rather than a generative-video play.
Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind's co-founder and CEO, said in the announcement that working directly with filmmakers is the best way to develop tools that support "authentic, meaningful storytelling." The language echoes how DeepMind has positioned its science partnerships — domain experts in the loop, model capabilities shaped to their workflow — rather than the more confrontational "replace the pipeline" pitch that has soured creative industries on generative AI.
A24 is not the first studio to wire AI into production. Netflix announced earlier this year that it was acquiring InterPositive, the AI filmmaking tools company founded by Ben Affleck. Amazon's MGM Studios stood up a dedicated AI unit last year focused on television and movie production tools. The DeepMind–A24 deal lands in a market where the major streamers and one frontier lab now each have a declared filmmaking-AI bet.
What DeepMind brings that the studio-led efforts do not is the underlying model stack. Google's Veo video models, Gemini's multimodal reasoning, and DeepMind's research pipeline give the A24 partnership access to capabilities that an in-house studio AI unit would have to license. In return, DeepMind gets training signal and product feedback from a studio whose brand carries weight with directors, writers, and the talent guilds.
The $75 million figure is modest by Google standards — DeepMind's parent has spent that on individual research hires this cycle — but significant for A24, which has historically operated lean. The capital likely funds a dedicated technology group inside the studio rather than production itself. Neither company disclosed equity terms, governance, or whether the AI tools developed will be exclusive to A24 or eventually licensed to other studios.
The risks are real and named. Hollywood's two most recent labor agreements carved out specific protections against generative AI in scripts and performances, and the membership has been skeptical of studio leadership's AI claims. A DeepMind-built tool that crosses guild redlines — synthesizing a performer's likeness, generating dialogue, or replacing below-the-line crew — would put A24 in a fight it has so far avoided. The partnership's framing as artist-feedback-driven is a hedge against exactly that scenario, but the proof will be in what ships.
The deal reframes the AI-in-Hollywood conversation away from generative-video demos and toward integrated production tools developed alongside working filmmakers. For DeepMind, A24 is a credibility unlock in a vertical where Google has otherwise had no presence. For the broader market, it signals that the next phase of creative-industry AI will be studio-by-studio partnerships with frontier labs, not off-the-shelf model access — and that the labs willing to give creatives design control will get the deals the rest of the industry cannot.
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