DeepMind, the AI and robotics research company owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, has seen its yearly losses mount to more than half a billion dollars.

Founded in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014 -- a year before the formation of Alphabet -- DeepMind has served as the AI research arm of Google, regularly publishing research papers and developing headline-catching advanced AI projects, such as its Go-playing AlphaGo program that beat a professional human player in 2016.

Developing advanced AI technologies has come at a steep cost, however.

Posting losses The London-based company saw a loss of nearly 470.2 million pounds ($567.25 million) in 2018, down from about 302.2 million pounds ($364.6 million) in 2017 and 153.8 million pounds ($185.6 million) in 2016, according to documents filed with the Companies House, the United Kingdom's government-sponsored business registry. Meanwhile, "staff costs and other related costs" totaled nearly 400 million pounds ($483 million) in 2018, up from about 200 million pounds ($241.5 million) in 2017, according to a 2018 financial document filed on Aug. 6. There are few companies that have those kinds of resources to spend on speculative tech, but Alphabet is one of them. Alan Pelz-SharpeFounder, Deep Analysis Despite the financial losses, DeepMind technologies and research are likely worthwhile anyway to Alphabet, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of market advisory and research firm Deep Analysis. "The losses are high but are to be expected, and I don't think those are of concern nor will be even if they were to double," Pelz-Sharpe said. "There are few companies that have those kinds of resources to spend on speculative tech, but Alphabet is one of them."