What do you get if you combine the insights of a neuroscientist, an artificial intelligence programmer, a computer games designer and a child chess prodigy? The answer: a company that, without having publicly released a single product, has become Google’s biggest European acquisition.

The ￡400m ($660m) swoop for artificial intelligence company DeepMind is the latest chapter in the varied career of the 37-year-old London-born founder Demis Hassabis, a chess master by the age of 13, who spent his teenage years immersed in the UK gaming scene.

DeepMind Technologies is a London-based start-up specialising in machine learning algorithms that one of its founders says could lead to a truly “conscious” form of artificial intelligence in 20 years. “This is my attempt to change the world for the better,” said Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind along with Mr Hassabis and computer scientist Shane Legg.