Google DeepMind and A24 Sign $75 Million AI Partnership Deal

Google DeepMind and independent film studio A24 signed a research partnership on Monday, June 22, 2026, that the companies called a first-of-its-kind effort to bring filmmakers into the design of AI tools from the start. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Alphabet’s Google is putting $75 million into A24 as part of the arrangement. DeepMind did not comment on the investment figure.

The companies said the initiative will focus on helping artists develop new creative workflows and techniques while ensuring future tools are shaped by the creators who use them. In recent years A24 has produced the horror film “Backrooms,” the Timothée Chalamet starrer “Marty Supreme” and the Oscar-winning adventure “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” among others. Under the agreement, A24 and DeepMind will collaborate on multiple research and development projects over time. A24 will play an active role in developing new workflows while filmmakers will retain full creative control, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The arrangement is not an intellectual property or data-training deal, the source added.

What Was Announced, in Numbers

Alphabet’s $75 million equity investment in A24 was reported by the Journal on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. DeepMind declined to comment on the figure. The investment marks the first time Google has taken a stake in a film studio, per the deal’s multiyear, non-exclusive structure and library terms.

Google’s own framing came through a blog post by Eli Collins, VP Product at Google DeepMind, titled “Google DeepMind and A24 announce first-of-its-kind research partnership”. Collins wrote that the collaboration pairs a world-leading research lab with the industry’s most filmmaker-forward studio. He called the partnership “the beginning of a collaborative journey, one rooted in research and shared curiosity.” Specific tools, technical outputs and creative milestones, Collins added, would “evolve over time.” The announcement names no films the partnership will touch.

Why Both Sides Keep Saying ‘Not a Data-Training Deal’

Two separate company communications repeat the same phrase within hours. Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, that the arrangement “is not an intellectual property or data-training deal.” Eli Collins wrote the same point more bluntly in his blog post, calling the partnership “not a production deal, or an IP deal, or a data training deal.”

The repetition is deliberate. Disney, Universal and Warner Bros have fought AI companies in court over alleged copyright violations on material used to train models. Google’s own AI systems have been trained on publicly available internet data, including creative work the company did not license. A24’s film and television catalogue sits squarely in the kind of content Hollywood’s largest studios have spent two years trying to keep out of training pipelines. Keeping it out of this deal is the structural choice the announcement is built around.

The deal is structured around five explicit exclusions:

• A production deal
• An intellectual property deal
• A data-training deal
• An exclusive arrangement
• A grant of access to A24’s film or television library

What the deal does cover is access, not ownership. A24 receives access to DeepMind’s research, infrastructure and global reach, per the Reuters source and Collins’s blog post. The two companies’ researchers will work side-by-side to test, iterate and build, Collins wrote, with the goal of “expand[ing] what is possible in the future of entertainment.”

What Each Side Is Actually Trading

The structure reads as a credibility exchange dressed up as a research deal. Google gains real-world feedback from working filmmakers on tools being built; A24 receives access to a frontier AI lab’s research, compute infrastructure and global reach. The financial core of the deal is the equity investment Google is making in the studio.

The deal’s structure also tells a story: what each side is buying, and what each side is keeping out. The multiyear, non-exclusive arrangement means A24 is not locked into using only Google’s tools and Google cannot train models on A24’s catalogue. Filmmakers at A24 will direct what they actually make, regardless of what tools end up on set. That last clause is the one A24 and its directors will care about most.

The Director in A24’s Corner Who Wants AI Gone

Kane Parsons sits inside the deal’s intended roster. The Wall Street Journal reports Google and A24 hope to include the movie studio’s existing artists in the partnership, including the YouTube creator who directed Backrooms, A24’s biggest recent commercial bet. Parsons is 20 years old and, by the Journal’s count, A24’s youngest and highest-grossing director.

His actual stance on generative AI is the most public anti-AI position in A24’s ranks. Parsons told The Australian earlier this month that he would use the technology to make films disappear if he could.

If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.

Parsons, A24’s 20-year-old Backrooms director, expanded the criticism in the same interview with The Australian, in the Variety piece on Parsons calling generative AI a cultural rot. “Generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot,” he said. “We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop,” he added, calling AI’s “genuinely harmful consequences” already underway. He said he wants to interrogate AI artistically in future films rather than deploy the technology in them.

The deal is a bridge between A24’s most AI-skeptical director and the lab behind some of the most-used generative models. A24 filmmakers will retain full creative control on their own projects, which means any director who refuses to use AI tools on set can. The deal’s creative control language is doing more work than its research language.

Where This Fits in Hollywood’s AI Land Rush

The A24-DeepMind arrangement is one of several major Hollywood-AI tie-ups of the past year. Streaming platforms, legacy studios and individual filmmakers have all moved to attach themselves to AI toolmakers. The full sequence runs from late 2025 through this week.

Martin Scorsese joined AI image firm Black Forest Labs as an adviser in June 2026, using the company’s FLUX model to storyboard scenes for his next film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. The Scorsese-Parsons contrast cuts across the same talent pool A24 draws from. Scorsese has joined an AI firm and is racing to learn its tools. Parsons has publicly said he would make generative AI “disappear forever” if he could.

Scorsese’s framing is the opposite of Parsons’s. “Cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve,” he said in a statement posted on Black Forest Labs’ website. He added: “I utilized 3D with Hugo and de-aging technology for The Irishman. Now, with this tool, I can share what I’m visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team.” Google itself has pushed into the same space with Gemini Omni Flash, its own conversational video editing model, which shipped across the Gemini app, Google Flow and YouTube Shorts in May. The two Google efforts sit on the same technology stack DeepMind is now extending into film.

1. 2025: Amazon’s MGM Studios launches an AI unit for TV and movie production tools.
2. March 2026: Netflix acquires InterPositive, Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking company.
3. June 2026: Martin Scorsese joins AI image firm Black Forest Labs as an adviser.
4. June 22, 2026: Google DeepMind and A24 announce research partnership and Google equity investment in A24.

The structure of the A24 deal differs from most of those moves. The multiyear, non-exclusive arrangement leaves A24 free to use other tools and bars Google from training on A24’s catalogue.

What Comes First Inside A24 Labs

A24 Labs is the studio’s internal technology division, and Scott Belsky, an A24 partner who was previously Adobe’s chief strategy officer, leads it. The first project under the new partnership, Belsky told the Journal, involves using AI to generate storyboards, the rough visual sketches directors use to plan scenes before cameras roll. The work is already under way inside A24 Labs.

Belsky’s framing of the partnership is its own pitch to filmmakers. The tools Google and A24 are developing, Belsky told the Journal, “won’t look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with.” Most AI developers, he argued, “mistakenly pitch their products as a way to make films cheaper and faster rather than better,” and “there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking.” The announcement includes no committed release date for the first tool, and Eli Collins’s blog post put the technical specifics squarely in the “evolve over time” bucket.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Google DeepMind A24 deal?

Google DeepMind and A24 announced a research partnership on June 22, 2026, covering multiple AI research and development projects over time. The deal includes a $75 million Google equity investment in the indie studio, per the Wall Street Journal’s report citing people familiar with the matter.

Is A24’s film library being used to train AI?

No. The Wall Street Journal reports the deal is structured to bar Google from accessing A24’s film and television library or training models on the studio’s content. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the arrangement is explicitly not a data-training deal.

How much did Google invest in A24?

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 22, 2026, that Alphabet’s Google is investing $75 million in A24. Google DeepMind did not comment on the investment figure when asked.

Who is Kane Parsons and why is he relevant?

Kane Parsons is the 20-year-old director of A24’s horror hit Backrooms and the studio’s youngest and highest-grossing director to date. The Wall Street Journal reports Google and A24 hope to include him in the new partnership, even though Parsons has publicly said he would make generative AI “disappear forever” if he could.

What will the A24 DeepMind tools do first?

The first announced project uses AI to generate storyboards inside A24 Labs, the studio’s technology division led by Scott Belsky. Broader toolsets and creative outputs will evolve over time, per Eli Collins’s Google DeepMind blog post.