PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jack Parker-Holder

Jack Parker-Holder is a machine learning researcher who works on world models, AI systems that generate interactive environments for training agents. After seven years in finance as a quantitative researcher and ETF trader in New York, he studied for a DPhil in Oxford's Machine Learning Research Group under Stephen Roberts, where his work included the PB2 hyperparameter tuning method in 2020 and the ACCEL curriculum algorithm in 2022. In July 2022, he joined DeepMind's Open-Endedness team, and Genie, a paper he coauthored in 2024, won a Best Paper award at ICML 2024. At Google DeepMind, he led Genie 2 in December 2024 and was one of the principal researchers on Genie 3 in August 2025. Since August 2026, he is a co-founder of Emulate, a UK world-model startup, with Matthew McGill and Philip Ball.

Now at
Emulate
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Timeline

  1. By 2020

    From J.P. Morgan to Oxford

    After studying maths at Exeter, he spends seven years at J.P. Morgan in New York as a quantitative researcher and ETF trader, taking a part-time master's at Columbia. As a DPhil student at St Peter's College, Oxford, in the Machine Learning Research Group advised by Stephen Roberts, he introduces Population-Based Bandits (PB2) with Vu Nguyen and Stephen Roberts in February 2020, a provably efficient way to tune hyperparameters during training.

  2. 2021–2022

    The ACCEL curriculum algorithm

    In June 2021, he interns at FAIR London with Tim Rocktäschel and Ed Grefenstette. In March 2022, he coauthors with Minqi Jiang, Michael Dennis and others a paper introducing ACCEL, which evolves training levels at the frontier of a reinforcement learning agent's abilities; the work appears at ICML 2022.

  3. July 2022

    Research scientist at DeepMind

    In July 2022, he joins DeepMind as a research scientist in the Open-Endedness team. His work there includes the AdA agent paper, Human-Timescale Adaptation in an Open-Ended Task Space, accepted as an oral at ICML 2023.

  4. October 2023

    Honorary lecturer at UCL

    In October 2023, he becomes an honorary lecturer in computer science at University College London, where he is part of UCL DARK.

  5. 2024

    Genie and an ICML award

    In February 2024, he and 24 coauthors, including Jake Bruce and Tim Rocktäschel, introduce Genie, a generative interactive environment trained without supervision on unlabelled Internet videos. Genie turns text, synthetic images, photographs and sketches into action-controllable virtual worlds, and it wins a Best Paper award at ICML 2024.

  6. December 2024

    Leading Genie 2

    In December 2024, Google DeepMind introduces Genie 2, a foundation world model that generates playable 3D environments from a single prompt image for training and evaluating embodied agents. He leads the project, with technical leadership by Stephen Spencer.

  7. August 2025

    Genie 3 in real time

    In August 2025, Google DeepMind announces Genie 3, which turns a text prompt into worlds that can be navigated in real time at 24 frames per second and 720p resolution. He is one of the principal researchers on the model.

  8. Since August 2026

    Co-founding Emulate

    In August 2026, he co-founds Emulate, a UK world-model startup, with Matthew McGill and Philip Ball, who also worked on DeepMind's Genie models. Emulate enters advanced talks to raise up to $700 million in a seed round, with Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners planning to lead.

Career

  1. Since 2026EmulateCo-Founder
  2. From 2023University College LondonHonorary Lecturer
  3. 2022–2025Google DeepMindResearch Scientist, Genie 2 Lead
  4. 2021MetaIntern
  5. Until 2020JPMorgan ChaseQuantitative researcher and ETF trader

Education

  1. University of Exeter
  2. Columbia UniversityMaster's
  3. University of OxfordDPhil

From the biography.

Videos

YouTube videos in which Jack Parker-Holder speaks or appears, newest first. A model chose them from YouTube search results. List updated 21 October 2026.

  1. Genie 3: A New Frontier for World Models [Jack Parker-Holder and Shlomi Fruchter] - 743The TWIML AI Podcast with Sam Charrington · 19 August 2025 · 1 h 1 min
  2. Type a Sentence, Get a Playable 3D World in 3 Seconds - Shlomi Fuchter & Jack Parker-HolderMachine Learning Street Talk · 5 August 2025 · 58 min

Video data from YouTube API Services. By watching you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. How we use YouTube data.

  1. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Jack Parker-Holder. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  2. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Jack Parker-Holder. Our estimates of where the 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google and Google DeepMind work now: 446 at Google and 452 across 278 other organizations.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Jack Parker-Holder. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Jack Parker-Holder yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Jack Parker-Holder jparkerholder.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Provably Efficient Online Hyperparameter Optimization with Population-Based Bandits arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Evolving Curricula with Regret-Based Environment Design arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Genie: Generative Interactive Environments arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. ICML 2024 Awards icml.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Genie 2: A large-scale foundation world model — Google DeepMind deepmind.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Genie 3: A new frontier for world models — Google DeepMind deepmind.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Former DeepMind world-model researchers’ startup Emulate in talks to raise $700M thenextweb.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Month-Old UK Start-Up Achieves Nearly $4bn Valuation | Silicon silicon.co.uk. Checked 21 October 2026.