India Can Lead Upcoming Moonshot Innovations, says Google X founder Sebastian Thrun
Bengaluru is often compared to Silicon Valley for having one of the biggest startup and developer ecosystems. Big ideas or significant breakthroughs often stem from small, focused teams with large risk appetites. At the Invest Karnataka 2025 summit, Sebastian Thrun, founder of Google X (Google’s research arm), who led the development of Waymo, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, discussed how Bengaluru could lead the next generation of moonshot innovations. Moonshot State of Mind “I think at some point here in Bengaluru, you’re going to fly to the airport. It’s not going to take an hour; it’s going to take five minutes,” he said, referring to a prototype of Sarla Aviation, which he came across at the summit. The technology would significantly cut travel times and reduce congestion, especially in a city like Bengaluru. A moonshot idea refers to an ambitious project that seems quite impossible to achieve. In Thrun’s words, “The moonshot idea is a transformation of some important societal problem with new technologies. He also highlighted the vast number of inventions still waiting to be discovered. Waymo started as a moonshot project at Google X. As of October 2024, Waymo was valued at over $45 billion after a $5.6 billion funding round led by Alphabet. At the World Government Summit 2025 in Dubai, Google CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted the remarkable growth that self-driving cars, and Waymo in particular, have had. “Last year, Waymo…served over 4 million passenger trips, and we are now averaging over 1,50,000…paid rides per week in the US across San Francisco, Phoenix, and LA,” he said, highlighting how they are achieving 78% fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers. Even Google Brain, which led to the creation of the transformer models that pioneer models like ChatGPT, began as a moonshot idea. Google X’s moonshot projects have added $200-300 billion in value, showing that even failures push technology forward. Google Glass didn’t take off, but it helped advance AR and VR. Project Loon, a Google project that used high-altitude balloons to provide internet access to remote areas, ran into geopolitical roadblocks, but it led to better alternatives like Starlink. Technology is Not a Zero-Sum Game “I’m a deep believer that technology complements people. I also believe it is not a zero-sum game,” Thrun said. He added that history shows that innovation creates new opportunities rather than eliminating work. In the 1700s, 95% of people worked in agriculture, but now, with new jobs emerging in fields like software engineering, aviation, media, and healthcare, the figure has dropped to just 1-2%. As agents enter the workforce, this sentiment is repeatedly reinforced by the Silicon Valley companies. At the AI Action Summit in Paris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated the opportunity for India’s AI journey, given how the country has the world’s largest AI talent pool. As the country enters a new economy shaped by AI, he urged the need for upskilling, which was also reflected in the Union Budget 2025. The government allocated ₹500 crore to set up a Centre of Excellence in AI for education, which will use AI to improve India’s education system. “I mean, this is your chance in India. You have the brightest people in the world. Most of our CEOs in America are Indian,” said Thrun. ‘Attention is All You Need’, a landmark research paper authored by eight scientists working at Google that introduced a new neural network architecture called the Transformer, included two Indian authors – Niki Parmar and Ashish Vaswani – both of whom are regarded Indian-American researchers. Thrun hinted towards a world where a few founders can build something extremely innovative.  The rise of AI inevitably lowers the barriers to entry, where small teams can build global companies from dorm rooms and coffee shops without the need for large teams or substantial capital. In a viral podcast with Y Combinator chief Garry Tan earlier, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed the future of billion-dollar startups in the intelligence era, which could involve just one person and 10,000 GPUs. The concept of a ‘one-person billion-dollar startup’ is not new and has been discussed by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on their own podcasts previously. A larger Risk Appetite The world is heading towards a technological singularity. “If you look at history and make a graph of inventions over time, like 3,00,000 years, suddenly, in the last 100 years, innovation has exploded,” Thrun said. As innovation increases in the AI age, predictions are harder than ever. “I used to be able to predict, like, 5–10 years from now. I can’t even predict three years from now anymore.” Thrun concluded by saying that AI can be risky, but safety emerges through responsible development, not preemptive regulation, and Waymo’s growth journey is a case point for this.
“I think at some point here in Bengaluru, you’re going to fly to the airport in five minutes.”
“I think at some point here in Bengaluru, you're going to fly to the airport in five minutes."
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["AI", "neural network", "ChatGPT", "OpenAI", "RAG", "R", "Go", "API", "GPT", "GAN"]
I hold a degree in political science, and am interested in how AI and online culture intersect. I am at aditi.suresh@analyticsindiamag.com &amp; x.com/aditisuresh12