DeepMind buys stake in Eve Online studio for AI tests

Google DeepMind announced Wednesday that it has taken a minority stake in Fenris Creations, the Icelandic studio formerly known as CCP Games. DeepMind plans to run experiments that study artificial intelligence behavior inside offline, controlled builds of Eve Online that are not connected to the live Tranquility server.

The companies said the investment is worth millions of dollars. Fenris recently spun out from publisher Pearl Abyss and rebranded to operate as an independent studio. Fenris said the funding and new structure will support ongoing development of Eve Online while providing DeepMind with a complex, player-driven environment for AI research.

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s CEO, said in a statement that he has long admired Hilmar Veigar Pétursson’s work and is ‘‘thrilled to partner’’ with Fenris to explore gaming experiences and advance AI research inside Eve’s player-driven universe. Alexandre Moufarek, director of inception at DeepMind, described Eve Online as ‘‘a one-of-a-kind simulation for testing general-purpose artificial intelligence in a safe sandbox environment.’’ Fenris founder and CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson wrote that the studio is grateful to Pearl Abyss for past support and that the new partners will help Fenris ‘‘continuously evolve a living universe.’’

Eve Online, launched in 2003, runs an emergent persistent universe with player-driven markets, political alliances and large-scale conflicts that arise from player actions rather than scripted content. Fenris has also been developing Eve Frontier, a separate on-chain space survival game that moved from the Redstone layer-2 network to the Sui layer-1 network for its mainnet launch.

The companies said the planned AI trials will use offline, controlled versions of the game and will not run on the live Tranquility server. It has not been disclosed whether DeepMind’s research will include Eve Frontier’s on-chain systems or remain focused on traditional offline simulations.

Fenris reported strong financial results for 2025, including a record November and one of its best quarters, which the studio said helped support its transition to independence. Both companies said they will share further technical details about the collaboration at the upcoming Eve Fanfest in Reykjavik next week.