Google negotiates $1.5 B acqui‑hire and licensing deal with AI coding startup Mechanize

Google is in advanced talks to acquire key talent from Mechanize and to license the startup’s reinforcement‑learning technology for autonomous software‑coding agents. The hybrid transaction, valued at more than $1.5 billion, would combine an acqui‑hire of the founding team with a non‑exclusive technology licence.

Mechanize, founded in 2025 in San Francisco by Tamay Besiroglu, Matthew Barnett and Ege Erdil, creates digital gyms where AI models learn to write, debug, test and deploy code without human intervention. Investors include Google chief scientist Jeff Dean and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. The deal reflects Google’s push to strengthen its AI‑driven coding capabilities while navigating heightened antitrust scrutiny of large‑scale AI acquisitions.